GRAND PRIZE WINNER
Coffee Ghosts
by Alastair Chisholm
FIRST PLACE £1,000
WINNER: ALASTAIR CHISHOLM
Alastair Chisholm is a children’s author and short story writer. His latest sci-fi adventure, ADAM-2, is the Blackwell’s Children’s Book of the Year 2021, and his short stories have appeared in various collections. Alastair lives in Edinburgh with his family, and his hobbies include writing, and playing games on his phone when he should be writing. You can find him on Twitter at @alastair_ch.
‘I saw a ghost, once, perhaps.
It was in daylight, right in front of me, in a coffee shop off the high street.
There were others around, it wasn’t just me. I don’t know what they saw. I was sat in a corner at one of the fake wooden tables, scattered with tiny crumbs and screws of torn paper napkins, and faint brown circles from the base of my cup, like animal tracks. Janet had a name for them, those circles, and I was trying to remember what it was.
‘Danny? Danny, are you listening?’ I looked up into Janet’s face and saw her expression. It was one I’d been seeing a lot recently, I thought. The one that said she wasn’t angry, or cross, or even disappointed, but felt that there was something that needed to be resolved; and that we could resolve it, but we both had to just focus, if we could. If we could try. I nodded.
‘Yes. Yes, of course.’
She sighed. ‘Well… it’s what they say, isn’t it? It’s not you, it’s me.’ She gave a rueful smile. ‘But it really is, I promise. I’m just in a place where, well, things aren’t the same anymore.
With me, I mean. This new job, and the travel, and… and…’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That is what they say.’ Her brow crinkled. ‘Danny, it’s just—’
A door clattered behind her, and a man entered, and I watched him. Just for somewhere to look, really, somewhere that wasn’t Janet. He struggled with the door; he seemed to find it very heavy, and one of the large metal handles had caught in his jacket. No one came to help him. I wondered if I should go across, but I didn’t, and eventually he disentangled himself and staggered inside. He stood just inside the doorway and ran his hands along the side of his head as if to smooth his hair down. His hair was black, and long, curling at the base of his neck, and his face was long, and he had long, pale fingers.