“Bone to His Bone”
E. G. Swain
available in Winter Ghosts: Classic Ghost Stories for Christmas
ebook only $0.99

E. G. Swain was a friend of M. R. James and wrote a series of ghost stories starring the Reverend Roland Bachtel, the Rector of Stoneground,  This is one of them.

The story takes place on Christmas Eve, and the Reverend Bachtel can’t sleep. So he gets up and goes into his library to read. The matches aren’t where he left them. As he’s fumbling for them in the dark, someone puts the matches into his hand.

The good reverend lights a match only to discover that there’s no one there. What is there is a book on the desk. Bachtel never leaves books out. The book is one on gardening; it was part of a library left by a long-dead rector in a previous century.

The book is initially closed, but when Bachtel turns away, he hears the book open and pages turning. His eye is drawn to a line that seems to be telling him to enter the garden. The page turning happens twice more, and Bachtel believes he is being told to go to a particular place in the garden and dig.

When he goes to the directed location, he finds a shovel…

Swain’s ghost stories are similar in style and tone to those of James, but without the menace.  This was the first of the Stoneground ghost stories I’ve read.  I’ll be reading some of the others.