September 4, 2024

Alley Ghost
By Rick Kennett

First published in Terror Australis (1988) and The Reluctant Ghost Hunter (1991)

WWII flight suit (from 303rdbg.com)

Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai Podcast.





“We have a ghost that needs killing.”

The strangest letter to ever drop into my mail box arrived one day, addressed in a child's neat printing. 

Dear Ernie Pine,

I heard that you killed a ghost one time. We have a ghost that needs killing. It lives in the back and is very frightening. If you need some help me and my friends can be your assistants.

Wendy Ellison

​Apparently Wendy and Company had met with something unfairy-like at the bottom of the garden, and saw ghost hunting as fun. My only association with this sort of fun had been with a spectral bike rider in the country town of Donnington. It had been accidental, amateurish and near-fatal. Someone, I suppose, had written about the incident on-line and Wendy had seen it. The return address on the letter was Waratah Road, Airfield South, a suburb on the other side of town near a small airport. Being unemployed at the time and at the mercy of government hand-outs, I had nothing planned for the next few days – possibly weeks -- so I decided to accept their invitation. Not to "kill" ghosts but to talk some sense into these kids.

                                                                     #
 
Some youngsters were playing ball on the medium strip the afternoon I swung my motorcycle into Waratah Road. As I parked a girl in the group came over and asked if I was Ernie Pine, having seen my photo on-line. She introduced herself as Wendy, and she was very much as I'd pictured her to be from her letter: ponytail, jeans, jumper, skinny, thirteenish. The other kids milled around, and she rattled off names like a teacher calling the role. Younger than Wendy – nine or ten – I could see she was something of a big sister figure to them. They were all prying fingers for the switches, buttons and levers on the bike's handlebars. I let their curiosity run its course, then we sat down against a front fence while Wendy took centre stage on the nature strip.

It had all started, she explained, with a boy named Ben. A fortnight before this eight year old had tried to run away from home "… because his mum is always drunk and his old man don’t care neither. Anyway, Ben was in the lane. He climbed over his back fence and was in the lane that runs behind the houses here. And that's when he saw the ghost."

"Go on," I said in a non-committal tone.

"It was like the figure of a man, but dark, all shadows, so Ben says. Like it wasn’t really there … like a camera trick in a cheesy movie. Anyway, it’s coming up to him and he starts to see it better. It had big frog eyes on the top of its head." She curled her fingers and placed them above her fringe. "And he says it smelled like a petrol station."

"The ghost smelt of petrol?"

"Yeah … nah. Not just petrol." A look of momentary confusion crossed Wendy's face. "Ben said it was like all the smells, oil and petrol and kerosene."

"Did the ghost say anything?"

"Yeah. It said 'Get off the field I wanna chew your pop'. Ben got so scared he jumped back over the fence."

Wanna chew your pop? Adding this to knowing the boy was having trouble with neglectful parents sent my mind racing in all sorts of strange directions, and none of them I wanted to follow. I said, "What makes you think it was a ghost, Wendy? Could’ve been a drunk loitering in the lane. Could’ve been booze Ben smelt."

"Ben know what booze smells like." Her ponytail swung as she shook her head. "It was a ghost."

"How do you know? You only heard about it secondhand."

"'Cause I saw it one time too."

"Uh huh. Any of you others see it?" I asked the children sitting either side of me.
Two or three of them said yes.

"A ghost,"said Wendy.

I stood and stepped onto the nature strip. "I suppose you’ve all been told by your parents not to play with fire or electricity or in freeway traffic. They tell you this to save you getting hurt by things you’re too young and inexperienced to handle. It's the same with ghosts. Let me tell you what happened to me with that ghost in Donnington. I didn’t 'kill' it. It simply ceased to exist once it had used me as a tool for its vengeance against the man who had killed him. Whether I lived or died didn’t concern it. Ghosts are often the essence of the worst in people." I turned to Wendy; the others were too young to grasp my meaning, but she was old enough to understand. "Leave ghosts alone, Wendy. If you really have one in your back lane, leave it alone."

She looked at me, puzzled, perhaps even disappointed. "But this one says I'm gunna chew you and everything."

"All the more reason to leave it alone. Take my advice and avoid using the lane."
"Mr Pine," she said in such a suddenly grown-up manner it brought me up short. "You don’t live here so you don’t care. But why should we avoid using the lane? We're allowed. What if there was a mad dog down there, what if there were tiger snakes. Someone would have to solve the problem. Right? It's the same with ghosts. It’s our lane and no ghost should stop us from using it. It's … it’s the principle of the thing."

That stung, despite it sounding like something parroted from television.

"All right," I heard myself say, though hardly believing it. "I'll take a look at this ghost of yours, if only for the preservation of 'the principle of the thing'."

Very much the child again, Wendy laughed and jumped and clapped. I knew it then – it was going to be Donnington all over again.

                                                                        #
 
The lane was a nameless separation of back fences. We walked down it, the kids filled with daylight bravado, me with vague uneasiness. I told them to look for anything unusual. But it was the most usual lane I'd ever seen, filled with the usual gravel, grass and rubbish. We eventually arrived at its dead end, un-accosted by ghosts, mad dogs or tiger snakes. Heading back I asked the two or three who had admitted to seeing the ghost for their stories.

 "I seen it last week," said John, a ten year old wearing a Spiderman tee. "It was in me backyard." He pointed to a fence a little way ahead. "It looked like a man looking for something. I ran in and called me dad, but when he came out there wasn't nobody there."

"Maybe a burglar."

"He didn’t take nothing then."

"Did you say he was looking for something?"

"Yeah. Like …" John bowed his head and shuffled about the lane, examining the ground closely.

"What was he wearing?"

"Dark stuff."

"Did he have frog eyes? Did he smell like a petrol station?"

"Yes.''

"Wendy, you said you saw the ghost."

"Yeah, it was last week. I was coming home from netball practice and I passed the laneway. I see this sort of shadow guy like leaning against the fence like he was sick, you know? Anyway, I see he's crying. Then he sees me and goes, 'I made a stupid mistake and now I will never rest.' Then he just, like, faded away."

We were back at the laneway entrance by now. I turned and looked into the lane, trying to imagine the situation. "Was it day or night?"

"It was just getting dark. About eight o’clock.'

"A shadow guy? Did he have frog eyes?"

Wendy looked uncertain. "Dunno. Didn’t see his face too good."

"Did he smell like a petrol station?"

Again the uncertainty. "Um … yeah, sorta, but more like the airport." She pointed to a couple of low flying aircraft not far to the north. It was only then I recalled the name of this suburb -- Airfield South – and realized I'd been hearing the growl of occasional planes since taking off my bike helmet.

"Aviation fuel?" I asked.

Wendy shrugged. "If that's what they call it."

I looked down the lane again, that very ordinary suburban lane, and wondered what secret it was keeping.
                                                                         #
 
It occurred to me, of course, that Wendy and her friends were trolling me. But most of them were nine or ten and it’s been my experience that nine and ten year olds in a group can’t keep a straight face when they think they have a grown up fooled. This lot had been as serious about this ghost business as it was possible for children their age to be.

OK. So if they weren’t fooling me were they fooling themselves?

That was more likely. Some odd bods can be found in back alleys. What had the children seen? A ghost or some strung-out homeless guy? Two of the kids had seen their ghost disappear, but all had seen the ghost at night. What then of the smells and the thing with 'big frog eyes'? Was it all mistakes and imagination? Or was it something more abstract?

My next step was in the direction of the local library where, armed with a pen and a notebook, I read everything I could – both on line and in print – concerning local history. By the time the library closed that evening my head and notebook was crammed with facts and figures, names and dates. The most promising item unearthed was about the airport. It had started as a landing strip in the 1920s, had become an air force base in World War Two which it remained until about 30 years ago when it was sold off to commercial interests and became a suburban airport. Later its outer southern runway was sold off for housing development to the Waratah Construction Company.
                                                                         #
 
The next day, back on Waratah Road, I knocked on Wendy's door, but nobody was home. So I wandered into the lane and took some random snaps with my phone. The idea was that though the lane might be empty on the phone' s screen, something might show up in the images. But something showed up on the screen first. It was the dirty face of a little boy standing at the threshold of the lane in trousers that were dirt from hem to hip.

"What you taking pictures of?" he asked, rubbing a threadbare sleeve across his nose.

"The lane," I said, putting the phone away. "I like lanes. Do you like gardening?"
He glanced down at his clothes. "I'm digging a garden and grow veggies in me backyard. Is that your motorbike out there?"

"It is."

"Can I have a ride?"

"Where would you ride to?"

"I dunno. Anywhere but here."

"Sorry, not without a helmet. Anyway, wouldn’t your mother and father worry?"

"Nah." He said as if the idea was a joke, an unfunny one. "Can I sit on your bike then?"
 So he sat on my bike, twisting the throttle and revving and roaring to himself as he ripped along the highways of his imagination.

I let a few kilometers go by before I asked, "Is your name Ben?"

"Yep, brrrrrrm brrrrrum."

"Did you see a ghost in the back lane?"

He glanced up at me. "Did Wendy tell you that?"

"Keep your eyes on the road," I told him. "When you ride a motorbike you have to have your eyes everywhere. Yes, Wendy told me. She said you told her this ghost you saw had big frog eyes."

"Yep."

"And smelt like the planes at the airport?"

"Yep. And it had a bib."

I did a doubletake that nearly broke my neck. "It had a what?"

"A bib. Like what babies have when they eat."

"Wendy didn’t say anything about a bib."

"Well, she called me a liar when I told her about the other things so I just shut up then."

"She doesn’t think you’re a liar now. What was this bib like?"

"Yellow." He took his hands off the handlebars and looked around. "Hey, you know what I found buried in my backyard? A bullet."

A bib. A yellow bib and frog eyes. "Yeah? What sort?" I asked, not really listening.

"A big one. All rusty."

Some ghost hunters get the stately spook, others the rowdy poltergeist. I get a frog-eyed phantom wearing a yellow bib in a blind alley.

"I'm going home now," he said, climbing off the bike. "Seeya."

It was then I realized what he'd just said. "Er … you found what buried in your backyard?"

"A big bullet."

"Can I see it?"

"Ma threw it out."

"Terrific. Could you show me where in your yard you found it?"

"Nope. Not allowed to let anyone in. Dad's out and ma's sleeping again."

"Well, how big was it the bullet? This big?" I spread thumb and forefinger.

"Bigger than that." He spaced his hands to show a decent sized caliber. "This big."

But I didn’t look at his hands. I looked at what they represented, and like dominoes my thoughts began toppling, coming to rest on an off-centre notion. Asking Ben to wait a moment I rummaged around in my bike's gear-sack. Was this what the frog-eyed ghost looked like? Well, he wasn’t sure. He'd seen it at night and this was daylight, and things can look different in the dark. But … well, it could be.

As I watched Ben run home I removed the goggles from my forehead and replaced them in the gear-sack.
                                                                      #
 
Later that afternoon I called again at Wendy's house and this time finding the family at home was ushered into their lounge room. Truth to tell, I'd been dreading meeting her parents, expecting a "What nonsense is this?" or "Why is this strange man talking to my daughter?" attitude. Wrong. I found Mr and Mrs Ellison accepting and broadminded, the rare kind of parents who hadn’t forgotten that they too had been children once.

Luckily there were few explanations to be made. They knew about me from Wendy who had painted me up as some heroic ghost buster, capable of all sorts of death-defying psychic deeds. Trying not to blush I asked them if they thought there might be something peculiar in their back lane.

"Can't say, Ernie," said Steve Ellison. "Mary and I seldom have cause to go into the lane."

"That's true," Mary put in. "The Loch Ness Monster may use it for his winter holidays for all we know. But if Wendy says something odd is going on in back there I'm inclined to believe her -- at least before dismissing it as childish games and imagination."

"Have you ever found anything unusual while digging in your backyard?" I asked.

Wendy’s parents glanced at each other, then Steve said, "You mean bones?"

"I mean anything: bones, pieces of metal, mechanical parts, bullets."

"Bullets?" said Mary through a disbelieving laugh. "What would bullets be doing in our yard?"

"The little boy a few doors down told me he found quite a large bullet while digging in his backyard."

"Ben," Wendy chimed in.

"Don’t believe everything young Ben says," said Mary Ellison. "He has a hell of a home life with his drunken mother and womanizing father. I mean, I feel sorry for the poor kid, but with so little involvement from his parents he does tend to make his life up as he goes along."

"I believe he saw a ghost."

"Maybe he did," said Steve. "But in the three years we've been here no one's dug up bullets or bones in the yard." He sat back in his chair and added, "Not that we've done that much gardening, I admit. But why the interest in buried treasure?"

'I'd rather not say for the moment. It may confuse things if I'm wrong, especially as the next stage of the investigation may bring in positive result."

'A seance?" Wendy asked hopefully.

"Nothing so elegant, Wendy. Or dangerous for that matter. No, ust a simple vigil. I'm going to sit out in the lane tonight and watch for the ghost."

Wendy jumped and clapped her hands. "And I'm going to help you!"

"No you're not!" said her mother.

"Ah, but mum! There's no school tomorrow."

"I know, but this is something we should leave to Mr Pine, dear." She glanced across at me. "It could be dangerous, couldn't it."

Hadn’t thought of that. At least not the sort of danger there is in a séance. But as I sat there nodding to the question I suddenly did feel like a heroic ghost buster – one who knew himself to be also a total fraud.

                                                                     #
 
Well, if I was a fraud at least I was trying to act genuine. In the lane that night I brought warm clothing, a torch, my phone already on camera mode, and a thermos of coffee. I sat against a fence about ten metres down the lane, just at the edge of the street light's reach.

Nine o'clock came and went. Ten o'clock did the same. Around half ten Wendy poked her head over the fence and scared the life out of me.

Midnight caught me napping.

I snapped awake. A strange smell was in the air. The smell of oil and grease and fuel. I looked up to see a figure looking down at me. Its face was in shadow but the flying goggles on the forehead glinted like frog eyes. It wore a yellow life vest.

"Get off the runway," it growled. "You want to be chewed by a prop?"

"Who … who are you?" My hands grabbed at the grass to stop myself from running.
It turned away like a black sheet twisting in the wind.

"No! Wait!" I dug out my phone and flashed off a few shots. "Wait! Who are you?"

"The agony of conscience," it cried, vanishing through the fence. "I will never rest!"
"No! I can help you!"

I waited another hour in the dark but the ghost did not reappear.
                                                                          #
 
The Ellisons let me sleep on their sofa that morning, but sleeping was something I did very little of.

By midday I was feeling a bit steadier. With Steve and Mary's permission and Wendy's help I dug four parallel trenches in their backyard.

"What if we find a skeleton?" Wendy asked after the first few shovelfuls.

"Unlikely," I said. "What I expect to find are bits of aircraft. Your alley ghost is … was an airman, Wendy. He was killed in a plane crash when Waratah Road was part of the air force base years ago."

We dug for a while in silence, then Wendy said, "I'm sorry now I said he was frightening and that I wanted you to kill him. I think he’s a very sad ghost."
I could only agree.

Then her spade struck something. It proved to be a tin can.

The second and third trenches yielded nothing. In the fourth, nearly at sunset, we unearthed two more tin cans, a dog's skull and part of an aircraft's propeller blade.
"Sometimes known as a prop," I told Wendy.

                                                                          #
 
Next day I paid a visit to the Defence Centre in town. I told them of the situation on Waratah Road (minus supernatural elements), explaining that residents were coming across bits of an aircraft while gardening, and that some suspected their homes were built on the site of a plane crash. Was there any way to verify this?
I was directed to the Public Relations Officer who directed me to the Military Records Library who said they’d look into the matter and asked me to call back tomorrow.

If patience is a virtue then I must be awfully debased. Nevertheless I hung onto my nerves and waited, and tomorrow, like all tomorrows, finally arrived.

"Yes, here it is."

The young woman behind the counter handed me some photocopied sheets of closely spaced typing, all stamped Declassified. I paid the required search and photocopying fees and began to read.

I was right. A plane had crashed on the south runway, approximately where the Ellisons's house now stood. Forty-three years ago a prop engined dive bomber had been conducting target practice off the coast. But after returning to base a tyre blew on landing, causing the plane to flip and crash.

"The pilot, flight lieutenant Henry Jillard, was severely injured and was hospitalized but recovered sufficiently to be discharged two months later. He retired from the air force on medical grounds and – "

I read the last bit several time, but it always said the same thing. I scratched my head, confused. If the pilot survived the crash, who or what haunted the back lane?
And why?

                                                                    #
 
While household phone books are becoming a thing of the past, they can still be found at the post office. There were only three Jillards in the local phone book and none of those admitted to being or knowing an old pilot by the name of Henry. Undaunted, I looked through country and interstate directories, phoning every Jillard I could find. Persistence pays. I finally found Henry Jillard interstate, two thousand kilometers away.

"Yes, I was once Flight Lieutenant Henry Jillard," came the brittle voice over the phone, "thought that was an age ago." He paused to cough. "I seem to know your voice from somewhere, young man."

"Yes, sir. We met in an alley in Airfield South a few nights ago."

There was a silence on the line, then Henry Jillard said, "So it's true. I had a horrible suspicion my returns to the south runway were more than nightmares." Another pause, then, "You said you could help, but you’re too late. The doctors told me it was too late a while back, but I’ve known it since the crash of my plane forty odd years ago.

"In what way, Mr Jillard?"

"There are mistakes and mistakes. There’s the mistake of not checking your aircraft thoroughly and having a bomb release jam and a tyre blow on touchdown. There’s the mistake of trying to play hero and save a valuable plane by disobeying standing orders to bail out and let the plane ditch in the sea when a bomb fails to release and just dangles in the cradle. I told flight control I’d managed to drop the bomb and was coming home. I came in at dusk so they couldn’t see the bomb was still there. I had some of the groun crew on-side who could unhook the bomb when I landed, so no one need ever know. Then the tyre blew on touchdown and I crashed. When I came to in hospital no one mentioned the bomb and I guessed it had thrown clear into a bog. That’s when I made my biggest mistake: I failed to see the consequences of my good fortune."

"But why do you search if you think there’s no hope?"

"What is there to do? 'Rest In Peace' they'll put over me, but it'll be a lie. How can I rest when I know what my neglect and vanity has left under someone's home?"

 "But there's still time --"

 "No there isn't, son. The bomb was not logged as lost and nobody will start pulling down houses on the word of a crazy old man like me. I lost my chance on the south runway all those years ago. I'm damned for my stupidity, and I think we better just leave it go at that."

He hung up.

Where to next? The police? The army? Tell them what? A ghost story?
Knowing what was there, I tiptoed back to Waratah Road.
                                                                    #
 
Someone was hammering metal. The noise rang clang clag clang through the street in irregular beats, echoing against the houses, making me more jittery, more on edge than I already was. Near the lane I met John, the eight year old Spiderman fan who had seen the searching figure in his backyard.

"You’re mates with Ben, aren’t you?" I asked him.

 "Yeah. Don’t like his dad but. No not either his mum. I only go to his place when they’re not there, like just now when we was digging our garden."

"Ben dug up a big bullet once in your garden. Did you see it?"

"Yep, I seen it. A couple of weeks ago."

"Did he ever dig up anything else?"

"A pipe."

"A water pipe?"

"Nah, a iron pipe. Just a bit of one. Roundy at one end and like skinny at the other."
My blood froze so that my voice came out small. "When did you find this pipe?"
"Just now. Me and Ben was digging our garden and we found this big pipe. Makes a big bad noise when you hit it with a hammer."

Clang clang clang, went the sound through the street.

"John," I said, trying to sound as calm and steady as possible, "run home – run home now and get your mum or dad to call the police. Better still, get them to call the bomb squad. Tell them to come Waratah Road right away. Have you got that?"

The youngster looked suddenly scared, but he nodded and scurried off.

Clang clang clanity-clang.

I was through Ben's front gate and down the sideway in seconds. As I hit the backyard the clanging was cut off by a squeal of fright. Ben sat in the dirt, a hammer in his little hand, the steel cylindrical body of a 250kg bomb protruding from the earth in front of him. He was staring up, open-mouthed. Standing over him, neither shadowed or transparent, was the full-bodied image of an airman in flying jacket, camo trousers, yellow life vest and goggles. He looked both young and old at once – the young man triumphant, the older self exactly the same.

"You were right," said the ghost, though its young and old face did not move. "It never is too late."

And he vanished.

                                                                   #
 
The police arrived who took Ben off me after I picked him up and carried him into the street. The bomb squad followed soon after and discovered that young Ben could’ve hammered on that bomb as long as he liked. It was a dud. It always had been.

The army went through the lane and adjoining backyards with metal detectors, digging up a few more bullets, a wing tip, splinters of the plane's fuselage and the inevitable tin cans.

Mercifully, Ben remembered little of the matter, only a great fuss of sirens and flashing lights. This brush with disaster too was a wake up call to his neglectful parents. At least we can hope so.

There only remains my photography.
​
It was days later before I remembered those photos I took. I'd viewed neither because Ben had interrupted me the first time and I'd been too terrified the second.
The two shots taken the night of the vigil were a disappointment. Something lurked in the flash, but it was vague, indistinct. For all I know it might be my thumb over the lens. I'm happier with the random shots taken earlier. They show an ordinary, empty suburban lane, much as the Waratah Road lane is to this very day.


                                                               💀💀💀

I live in Melbourne, Australia. After working as a motorcycle courier for 42 years -- possibly a world record – I am now retired, spending my time listening to podcasts and being addicted to YouTube. Though once a whippet owner I now content myself to talk to next door's white tom who sometimes condescends to talk to me. "Alley Ghost" is one of my Ernie Pine series concerning a ghost hunter who hates being a ghost hunter. He first appeared in the 20th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories and has made appearances in magazines, anthologies, podcasts and two novels.

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