The Wiremaker's Ghost by Paul Brookes

The dead always speak more clearly than the living, especially when you’re dreaming. It was after my father’s sudden death at my sister’s wedding that I first heard one. I was patrolling the old mine, where the wind cut deep and the silence settled heavy. That night, something else settled on me, too—a ghost. I’d heard tales, being a night watchman, but this was different. This was no shadow on the wind. This ghost spoke like our old grocer, and I could see him plain as day, though his presence was anything but ordinary.

"Sorry to put the wind up you, Jim," the grocer said, his voice echoing in the chill air. "Just here to tell you, your dad’s alright. It was Tracy, y’see. She said ‘I do’ after telling your dad she was with child. That was the moment."

He paused, fixing me with a knowing look. “Now, Jimmy Boy, where’s your dad’s pocket watch?”

I hated when the grocer called me that. But his request shook me. The watch—my father’s watch, long since broken—sat buried deep in my many layers of coats. It hadn’t worked since the day Dad passed. I fished it out, reluctantly handing it to the ghost.

He wasn’t dressed like a grocer anymore. His leather apron and soot-stained hands marked him as something older, a blacksmith perhaps. I noticed the strange metal tool he held—a wire-drawing plate. My breath froze as the air around us grew hotter. The grocer-turned-wiremaker fed a glowing rod of metal through the plate, pulling it thinner and thinner, like some forgotten art of crafting. In a blur, he opened the back of the watch, replacing a broken wire with one he’d just made.

When he gave it back, the watch ticked. For the first time in years, it kept perfect time.

"Now," the ghost said, his voice sharp with purpose, "do me a favor. Find out who killed your best mate."

"Lozzy?" I gasped. The name clanged through the hollow quiet, breaking what I had thought was a dream. I hadn’t thought about Lozzy in years. The ghost’s eyes locked onto mine, cool as anything.

"We still do jigsaws in heaven," he said, disappearing into the air like he was never there.

That night, the cold and the dark clawed at me as I patrolled the mine. My mind drifted to a broken house I’d seen in a dream. Inside, a picture frame lay shattered on the dusty floor, its sepia photograph escaping into the void. I’d stared through cracked windows, overgrown weeds choking the life out of a once-loved garden. A red shotgun cartridge perched ominously on the window ledge, and I felt the brokenness seep into me. The world had been shattered for some time, long before my father’s death or even Lozzy’s.

The next day, I met Mary at the pub. It was time to confront everything, even if I didn’t know how. She sat across from me, her blind eyes staring through me. “Dreaming again,” she said.

I didn’t know if she meant me or Martha, Lozzy’s mother. Apparently, Martha had been haunted too, plagued by dreams of rivers and furniture laid out in open fields. In one of those dreams, she met a talking dog—a dog named Death. The creature spoke of Lozzy, hinting at the mystery of his passing. Martha believed she could learn more, could find out what really happened to her son through this canine guide in her nightmares.

Mary’s sharp words sliced through my thoughts. "You’re no better than her, Jim. Blind to the world outside your own selfishness. You can’t see what’s right in front of your eyes."

The grocer’s cryptic message swirled in my head. There were pieces missing, but I was determined to solve the puzzle. Somewhere, hidden in the past and buried beneath the dreams, lay the truth of Lozzy’s death. But it was shrouded in layers of history, secrets intertwined like vines choking an old house.

I returned to the pit the following night, the dark still settling heavy around me. The shadows were deceptive, always transforming the landscape into something it was not. I imagined the bushes as men, the cracks in the earth as secrets waiting to be unearthed. The grocer-ghost had said this was a jigsaw, but every new piece only seemed to deepen the mystery. Who was I now—just a man trying to untangle the past, or something more, like the grocer, like the blacksmith who forged time itself?

When I stood again on the slag heap, the sky heavy with clouds, I could almost feel it—the hidden river of truth, winding through the dark, waiting to be found. And I would find it, even if it meant crossing that threshold between the living and the dead.

The watch in my pocket ticked, a reminder that time was on my side, at least for now.