Chapter Text
“They’re here,” the Captain announced from his post by the window. The first few vehicles had appeared and were coming steadily down the drive. “Oh, and look, they have— Good lord!”
In addition to the modern vehicles the Captain was used to seeing when film crews came, there were several whose colour and shape he recognised from back in his army days, when he’d been alive. Two cargo trucks with tarp stretched tight over the back, an off-roading jeep with rutted tires, and a couple of staff cars, all of which had long snouts to fit the old engines. Each was secured on the back of their own tow truck.
“What is it, Captain?” said Pat, coming over to stand next to him. “Oh, goodness me, they came prepared, didn’t they?”
The Captain’s eyes crinkled with a hidden smile. “They certainly did,” he said. “If those aren’t real cars from the Blitz…”
“They are something,” Pat agreed. “Begs the question…”
“What?”
Pat turned slowly toward him. “Well, what if they are real? Really from your time, that is. Not replicas. And if they are…”
“Go on,” the Captain urged, unsure where Pat was taking this.
“I just thought… Now, I don’t want to speak prematurely, but it did occur to me that maybe… There might be a small chance…”
“Spit it out, man,” Julian said from behind them.
Pat cleared his throat. “What I mean is, what if there’s a ghost in one of those trucks? From your time, I mean. How cool would it be to run into another officer?”
Kitty appeared at the window next to theirs. “I think that would be so cool,” she cooed, rocking forward on her heels.
The Captain barely registered what she’d said. Pat was right, there was a chance. If ghosts were trapped in the places they died, that could mean any number of men might be arriving at Button House right now, holed up in those cars since the war. Not just fellow officers, but potentially people the Captain had known, once.
But it didn’t do to dwell on it. Dwelling had never gotten the Captain anywhere good. Except… Was that…?
It was! Bringing up the rear of the line was a final tow truck, atop which was a familiar vehicle: a short, brownish green one with a great red cross painted on the side, denoting its use for the British Medical Services.
What if…? No, he wouldn’t be there. They had deployed too many medical trucks in the war, it was too unlikely for the crew to source one out of North Africa when there were so many others close by. Africa was hardly next door. Plus, even if, by some miracle, they’d found the truck Havers died in, what were the chances he’d have become a ghost, stuck around this long? Too many things would have to line up perfectly, and the Captain was rarely that lucky.
“You all right, Captain?” Pat said quietly, snapping him out of his thoughts.
The Captain plastered on a little smile for Pat’s benefit. “Never better. Never better.” He spun to look at the rest of the ghosts, who were all sitting or standing in various parts of the room. “Shall we go down, then?” he asked them, and hardly waited for a response before he led the way downstairs.
Alison and Mike were already outside, greeting the director, who had arrived in a sleek modern car that shone like an iridescent beetle. It was rather too flashy for the Captain’s taste, and impractical— what was the use of a car that had no solid roof? And in England, no less! Did the man not care about rain? Still, the Captain gave the director a cursory nod, then went to stand by the dried up old fountain as he waited for the Button House ghosts to catch up. In an effort to escape Pat’s concerned stare, he’d walked a tad faster than he intended to, leaving the rest of them scrambling to keep up. On another day, he’d have positively crowed about his superior physical ability, but today he was brimming with a nervous energy that overtook anything that could have resembled pride.
Once the ghosts had gathered around him, he said, “I don’t know how much you all heard upstairs, but there’s exciting news. Those old cars the film crew brought—” he pointed to them in turn with his swagger stick— “may contain ghosts. From my time. A lot of men died in the war, we might get to meet some new people.”
“Soldiers?” Fanny said, with a look of carefully-guarded interest. “Would they be in uniform, do you think?”
“They may very well be,” said the Captain.
She raised her eyebrows. Primly, she said, “Well, that- that would be all right, I suppose.”
The Captain chuckled. “I’m sure. But first we must do some reconnaissance. Make visual confirmation before we get our hopes up too much.”
“Er, what is ri-con-nin sauce?” Robin said.
“What the Captain’s trying to say,” said Pat, “is that he wants us to help him look for ghosts, check if there actually are any.”
Robin nodded. “Oh.”
“The task is simple,” the Captain said, beginning to pace in front of his friends. “Each of you will look into one of the ‘40s cars for ghosts. Be on the lookout for the usual signs: passing through things, visible wounds, etc. Here are your assignments: Julian, you take that first cargo truck; Fanny, that second one; Thomas, the jeep; Katherine, that first staff car; Robin, the next; Mary, the final staff car; Patrick, the medical services truck; and Humphrey—” The Captain’s brow furrowed as he realised Humphrey body wasn’t standing amongst them. No one was carrying his head, either. “Has anyone seen Humphrey lately?”
The others looked around and shook their heads.
“Very well. If you see him, ask him to keep watch of the crew as they come by. I shall do the same. Alert me if you find anything,” the Captain said. “Off you go.”
“What if we don’t want to?” Thomas said, but deflated a bit when the Captain fixed him with a serious look. “I want to,” he added, and started after the others. “I was only asking.”
Pat shifted uncomfortably at the Captain’s elbow, the last of them to stay. “Cap,” he said, “I was thinking…”
“Hm?” the Captain replied. He was only half listening, too busy following the progress of the ghosts as they made their way toward their assigned cars. “What is it?”
“Well, we might not find anyone, not to mention, er…him.”
The Captain blinked. “Who?” he said, acting like he was still more interested in watching the others.
“I just want you to be prepared,” Pat said, “for what we might find. I’d really hate to see you disappointed.”
The Captain sniffed. “Hardly. I’ll be fine.” He pivoted so his face would be hidden from Pat. There was a woman unloading gear in that direction, so he focused on her, pretending she was the reason he had moved in the first place. “Always am.”
“You say that, but I know you, Cap. You bury things because that’s how you were taught to deal with them. I know how it is, I do that too. It’s not healthy—”
“Patrick—”
“You know I’m right. You’ll put on a brave face, but inside, you’ll just… I don’t want this to break you, if it doesn’t turn out how you want.”
“I’m not so delicate as all that. Honestly, man. You should know me better by now,” the Captain admonished.
Pat sighed. “All right,” he said. “But I want you to know, I’m here for you. No matter what. I know Havers meant a lot—”
The Captain rounded on him. “Shall I go examine that truck,” he snapped, “or do you want to keep blathering on about things that don’t concern you?”
A whole slew of emotions passed over Pat’s face then, and though he fought to keep his expression level, sadness clearly won. “Medical services, you said?”
“Er, yeah,” the Captain said quietly. “I’m— I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No. You’re a private person, I get it. I was pushing too hard.”
“Still.”
“Yeah. Don’t worry about it, mate,” Pat said, then he started off toward the truck.
It wasn’t long before Mary came running, waving her arms wildly and screaming, “Captain, Captain, quickly!”
The Captain took a direct path across the grass, collecting Pat along the way. “Who did you find?” he asked Mary.
“I doesn’t know, but the…” Mary wheezed. She bent over, bracing her hands on her knees. “The green cart…with the bloody cross, it eats! There be only a man’s bottom left!”
“You were supposed to be looking at one of the staff cars,” the Captain said. “Black, long snout, right there.”
“I knows. I isn’t…done with the black cart yet,” Mary said. “I sees the man…eaten before I gets to check.”
“I promise you, Mary,” said Pat, “no one’s being eaten.”
Mary straightened. “No? Then they be visions from the Devil. ‘Tis a shapely bottom, oh yes.”
“But is the bottom— er, is the man a ghost?” the Captain asked her.
“I has not checked, yet,” she said. “But he wears your clothes.”
“Show me,” the Captain said, and Mary led him and Pat toward the final tow truck in the lineup. There was indeed a man up on the flatbed, but he was only partially visible; his front half was hidden inside the green medical services truck, and his back half was bent over its tailgate.
“By Jove, you were right,” Pat said to Mary. “It does sort of look like he’s being eaten.”
“I speak not lies,” Mary said solemnly.
“Yes, well don’t stare,” the Captain said, staring openly. The man’s bottom was very prominent, bent over like that, and it took the Captain a few seconds too long to realise Mary had been right about another thing: the man was dressed in a Royal Army Officer’s uniform— at least, from what little the Captain could actually see of it.
His moustache twitched. He ignored the significant look Pat was giving him and called up to the soldier: “Hello, up there!”
The soldier extracted himself from the back of the truck and the Captain waved. The man was backlit by the sun and hard to see, but there seemed to be some sort of recognition on his face, prompting him to start for the edge of the flatbed, toward where the Captain, Mary, and Pat were standing.
Happiness had always been skittish around the Captain, but there it was, pulling his mouth into an easy smile and making him feel slightly weightless. It was fitting, actually, that Pat was one of the first people Havers would meet. Out of all the Button House ghosts — and really, out of anyone the Captain had met since his army days — Pat had come the closest to whatever his and Havers’ relationship had been. There was a similar friendship there, a similar closeness. He had a feeling Havers would really like Pat.
But all those thoughts died the instant the soldier reached the edge of the flatbed. As he hopped down onto the gravel drive, he turned partway into the sunlight, illuminating his features for the first time.
The Captain stepped back.
It was a handsome face, but it was unfamiliar. And as the soldier walked along the side of the tow truck, the Captain saw that he wasn’t wearing a uniform after all, but instead, green coveralls that, from a distance, had looked very similar.
The man stopped at the truck’s passenger side window. “All good back there,” he told the driver, and thumped the side of the truck twice.
“Ah,” said the Captain. So he wasn’t a ghost, either. He hadn’t seen or heard the Captain before. Just a coincidence.
Not dead. Not a soldier.
Not Havers.
The Captain only allowed himself to feel disappointed for a moment before he stood up straight again, tucked his swagger stick under his arm, and ordered Mary and Pat to finish their duties. Then he turned sharply on his heel and went to stand by the front door of Button House, offering the film crew advice on how and where to best unload their gear: “Yes, over there, with the others, that’s it… Watch it, man, almost hit me with that… Careful, now, mind the corners… You’ll want the other room for that, third door on the right…”
He also supervised the actual setup in the rooms they were filming in, becoming very interested in their set design and offering critiques, none of which the crew could actually hear. This didn’t bother him very much — it was nice to feel involved with something — until he saw the way they were configuring the meeting room.
“Alison,” he said, coming up to stand next to her.
She gave a start. “OH! My…” She waved at one of the designers, who was giving her a strange look. “I’ve…never seen one of these before,” she explained, pointing at the first thing she saw, which unfortunately happened to be a book.
The designer blinked and stared for a moment, but soon got back to work positioning a stack of filing cabinets.
Alison winced, closing her eyes for a second. She sighed, turned toward him, and held up her phone like she was taking a call. “Will you stop doing that?” she asked the Captain quietly. “So many people think I’m mad. Too many. What do you want?”
“I have thoughts about the way they’re setting up.”
“Do you,” she said, unamused.
The Captain raised an eyebrow, but didn’t point out her impertinence. He’d reserve that for a time when he wasn’t in need of her help. “Well, I was wondering if you’d say something to them about it, convey my thoughts.”
“Oh, they won’t listen to me. Definitely not after that outburst, they’ll think I’m too thick to know where things should go.”
“But you could try, couldn’t you? This room had benches in it, not desks. Two by four. Eight in total, each sitting three men. Twenty-four people, at most, in the meetings. Though sometimes it was less, and we’d push the extra benches to the sides of the room. And my desk was up there. So about twenty-four people in the room, give or take, because we did have guests.”
“Sorry,” Alison said, forehead scrunching in confusion, “so what should I tell them? You just shot off a lot of numbers. How many desks?”
“Not desks,” said the Captain, “benches. Eight benches in two rows. Got it?”
“Yeah, I think so. But listen, I don’t know what they’ve brought, furniture-wise. Even if I tell them, and they believe I know what I’m talking about, they might not have brought any benches. Or care.”
“Well they should,” said the Captain. “These film people should be aiming for accuracy. And since they have access to privileged information —” he gestured to himself— “they should use it.”
“I’ll let them know,” she said, and the Captain gave her a sharp nod, dismissing her.
*******
Soon enough, they were filming, and even though the rooms still weren’t set up in the precise ways the Captain remembered, he supposed it was close enough. If not for a few key differences, he could almost pretend this was a normal day back in the ‘40s, working on their weapons research or waiting for news from the front. He couldn’t get over the sight of so many uniformed officers walking the halls again, even if they were actors and far from the real thing.
Really, there was only one thing that could make the whole thing better for him, but after three days of no ghost sightings, he had long given up hope of spotting anyone he knew. That is, until he overheard a particularly interesting conversation between Mike and a member of the crew:
“—do you even get period-accurate vehicles?” Mike asked the woman.
The Captain, who had been passing through to one of the sets, stopped in the doorway to listen.
“It’s less difficult than you’d expect, considering how many were issued during the war. A lot of them were destroyed, but there are still so many out there that survived. You can actually trace some of their histories based on ownership, or planned routes, but sometimes you just get lucky and find them somewhere. The ones we brought here belong to the museum I work for.”
“You loan them out, then?” Mike said.
“Yeah, so long as they return in the same condition. The crew aren’t allowed to drive them very far. For preservation, but also for the emissions. But you’d be surprised how many cars the museum gets from rich guys online. See that one, there?” she said, pointing out the open front door to one of the cargo trucks. “A Bedford QL. Bit of a rarer case: some bloke found it in the woods on his land. Said he’d lived there for fifty years and had never been to that part of his property before, then one day, just like that, he found the car.”
Mike shook his head in amazement. “Gosh, he must have tons of land.”
“Yeah,” the woman said. “We figure there was ice or snow the day the truck crashed; it ended up in a gully and came to us with the back half caved in. So you can imagine it was a pretty nasty crash. Most of the tarp was missing, too, but hey, that’s time for you. We patched it up as best we could.”
“Amazing,” Mike said. “I’d never have guessed, it looks brand new. So you restore the old cars?”
“Uh-huh. I think the coolest one we brought here was actually shipped in from Africa, from one of the old English units there. I want to say Libya? Somewhere up north.”
The Captain stopped breathing. That’s where Havers had gone. “Ask her which vehicle, Michael,” he ordered.
“Oh yeah?” Mike said. “Which one?”
If the Captain had been alive, he’d have slapped Mike proudly on the back. He settled for a fist pump instead. “Well done, old chap,” he said.
“That second cargo truck, actually,” the restorer said. “The one on the left. That’s a Bedford OYD. It was fully intact when we got it; we only had to buff out a couple dents in the side, do a little paint work—”
The Captain didn’t hear the rest of her sentence. He was already out the door, heart outpacing his quick strides over the gravel, mind bombarding him with thoughts about chances and odds.
He had spent lifetimes trying to forget what this felt like, this particular brand of hope. It was blinding, all-consuming, exciting, dangerous. It made him confront things he wished would stay buried, made him latch onto foolish ideas— scenarios where Havers returned to Button House through some contrived means. They all began something like this, and then, and then, and then.
And then the fantasy would end, and the Captain would feel that much hollower afterward. One more layer scraped away. But as hard as it was to keep reliving it, he couldn’t stop himself from going back, starting over. There were all these little reminders of Havers everywhere, painted into the landscape: Havers on the lawn, celebrating with him when their side won at cricket; Havers reading a geology book in the library; Havers standing beside him as they held a meeting; Havers shaving with the bathroom door wide open; Havers in the kitchen, making himself tea— two lumps of sugar, a splash of milk; Havers staying up late with him as they finished that one last thing; Havers leaning slightly into him as they laughed together in the hall.
Havers taking his final walk through the gate, the memory morphing so that he was sometimes looking back at the house, knowing exactly which window to wave at; sometimes continuing on, face hidden from view; sometimes faltering, running back to his Captain, embracing him the way they hadn’t been brave enough to. And more and more and more.
It was hell here, sometimes.
But this cargo truck was the closest he’d ever come to bridging that gap between fantasy and reality. It was his best chance yet of finding Havers’ ghost. Sure, North Africa was huge, but the restorer had still specified Libya instead of some other country, and even though Fanny and Julian had already searched the trucks, a ghost could easily go unnoticed amongst all the uniformed extras. If the Captain didn’t double check, he would regret it for the rest of his afterlife.
He paused in front of the Bedford OYD, nervous all of a sudden. It filled him with a tingly, churning energy, working itself along his limbs and making them shake. It was ridiculous. Hadn’t he lived a life? Why was this the thing to make him so unsteady?
“You are a soldier,” he muttered to himself, lifting his chin and rolling his shoulders to gain some kind of control over his body. He took a breath, one last moment of hesitation before he poked his head through the passenger side door, into the cab of the truck.
It was empty.
He forced himself to keep breathing. Tried to squash the disappointment that threatened to overtake the hope. They kept trading places, one moment buoying him and in the next threatening to drown. It was a horrible sensation, and he wasn’t even sure which he wanted to win, in the end. Maybe neither.
But there was more to search. He headed to the back of the truck and, using the downed tailgate as leverage, hoisted himself inside. His knees complained, popping loudly as he straightened back up. Though it was only a hair past 1400 hours, there wasn’t much light coming in, and from what little he could distinguish from the deep shadows inside, it appeared the truck was filled mostly with props: rolled up maps, fire extinguishers, first aid kits, fuel drums with “PETROL” printed in a white font, and crates of helmets, uniforms, guns, and rations.
“Hello?” he called into the semi-darkness, questioning his decision all over again. He ducked around a fuel drum, inching his way into the back of the truck. “Lieutenant Havers, are you in here?”
Quietness stretched one second into twenty. Then came a breathless sort of laugh.
“Captain?”