Based on a folktale from Lincolnshire

Copyright © by A. Æ. Hunt-Anschütz 2002

A young man named Sam awoke one night to find his house burning down around him. The walls of his bedroom were in flames and smoke was exuding from his mattress. Sam rose up out of his burning bed. He rose up until he could look down and see his own body below him, charred and lifeless. He looked for the cause of the fire and spotted his kerosene lamp laying on the floor, its glass top shattered. "It's all my own fault!" he thought. "I must have fallen asleep reading with the lamp lit. I must have rolled over in my sleep and knocked it off the bedside table."

Sam left the burning house. He didn't have to leave by the door. He floated over fields until he came to a path. He drifted along the path until he came to a crossroads where he spotted another ghost. "What should I do? Where should I go?" he asked. The ghost lifted a phantom arm and pointed toward the west. Sam set off in that direction and soon came to a graveyard where moss-covered monuments shimmered in the moonlight. He came to rest under a crooked yew tree and surveyed the scene around him.

Something moved in the shadows. Something came up out of the earth. It was big and long and slimy and dirty. It seemed to Sam to be a giant worm. Slowly, it opened up its huge maw and speaking in a low gritty voice asked, "Where are you then?"

Sam looked around to be sure that he was the one being addressed before replying, "I'm here!"

"Yes," said the worm, "but where did you leave yourself?"

"Me? said Sam, "I'm right in front of you!"

"Your earthly remains, your body, your corpse," said the worm.

"Oh," said Sam, "that stuff was burnt up in the fire."

"Hmmff," said the worm, "that won't do. We need something to work with. You see, our job is to commit you to the earth. If you're not committed to the earth, you'll have to wander it forever as a ghost."

"I suppose I could go back and bring you my ashes," said Sam.

"Yes," said the worm. "Yes, that would give us something to work with. Go on then."

Sam went back to his earthly home. He found the place where his bed used to be. Now there were only cinders and a few clumps of charred wood and bone. Sam scooped up all the debris from the area around his bed and wrapped it in the folds of his flowing shroud. He drifted back to the graveyard, back to the yew. Soon the worm appeared. "Here I am," said Sam, spilling out the ashes before the worm.

The worm crawled amongst the cinders. It rolled in the remains. Then it looked up at Sam. "There's something missing," it announced. "There's not a whole body here to be committed to the earth".

"But I'm sure I gathered up every bit of ash," Sam protested.

"There are three fingers missing," said the worm.

"Oh," said Sam, nodding his spectral head. "You're absolutely right. I was missing three fingers before I died, so they wouldn't be with my burnt remains. I got frostbite one winter. The doctor couldn't save my fingers. He cut them off."

"You must bring them to me," said the worm.

Late that night Sam floated off toward the doctor's surgery. He thought it was the best place to start his search. First he looked in the yard behind, where he knew that chopped-off bits of folk and stillborn babies were buried, but his fingers weren't there.

Sam entered the house. He didn't need to use the door. He tried to ask the doctor where his fingers were, but the only response he got was a scream. (The next day the doctor told everyone that he'd seen Sam's ghost, but no one believed him. He'd been seen drinking in the pub earlier that night.)

After searching the rest of the Doctor's house, Sam finally drifted into the cellar. There he found a jar containing three swollen fingers bobbing in yellow liquid. He put the jar into the folds of his shroud and returned to the graveyard. "Here I am," he announced to the worm.

The worm wrapped its slimy self around the jar. "Yes, this is you," it grumbled. "But you're still not all here. Something is missing. Something very small."

"Could it be the wart I used to have on my nose?" asked Sam.

"No, no," said the worm, "something you were born with. Something that's supposed to be there. Like your fingers are supposed to be there."

Sam thought and thought. Then it dawned on him. "There is something else missing," he told the worm. "When I was four years old my brother and I were playing in a field where someone was building a new wall. I don't remember the surroundings all that well. Anyway, my brother picked up a brick from the pile and accidentally dropped it on my left foot. The corner of the brick hit my little toenail. That toenail turned black and fell off, and it never did grow back." Sam paused for a moment and then continued, "but surely it doesn't matter. It never mattered in life. Didn't cause me any pain. No one even noticed my little toenail was missing when I went about barefoot."

"But it is missing," said the worm. "Without it we do not have a whole body to commit to the earth. You must bring us your little toenail from your left foot."

"But it really doesn't matter," protested Sam. "I'm perfectly happy to be committed to the earth without the little toenail from my left foot."

"Can't be done," said the worm.

So Sam set off, back to his childhood home, in search of his childhood toenail. For a hundred years or more folk round those parts have reported sightings of a ghostly presence in the fields. It seems to appear most strongly whenever a new bit of earth is dug up, and whenever an old brick wall is torn down.