Captain ffox tells his men a ghost story from his cubhood, to distract them from the very real horrors of the Western Front.

Today’s story is “Jenny-Burnt-Tail”, written and read for you by Huskyteer, originally published in Trick or Treat 2: Historical Halloween from Rabbit Valley, and you can find more of her stories at huskyteer.co.uk.

Much has been said of the horrors of war, and much, no doubt, remains to be said. Yet there are other horrors than war. And so tonight for your consideration, a tale of a tale called Jenny-Burnt-Tail. A comparison, perhaps a contrast, perhaps a choice, though that choice is left to you… on the Ghost of Dog.

You’re listening to The Voice of Dog.

and this week we’re reading Halloween stories.

Today’s story is

“Jenny-Burnt-Tail”,

written and read for you by Huskyteer,

originally published

in Trick or Treat 2:

Historical Halloween

from Rabbit Valley,

and you can find more of her stories

at huskyteer.co.uk.

Much has been said of the horrors of war,

and much, no doubt, remains to be said.

Yet there are other horrors than war.

And so tonight for your consideration, a tale of a tale

called Jenny-Burnt

-Tail. A comparison, perhaps a contrast,

perhaps a choice,

though that choice is left to you…

on the Ghost of Dog. “Jenny-Burnt-Tail” by Huskyteer The second autumn of the War was a bitter one.

Freezing rain had turned the earth in the trenches to mud,

and we were all wading around in it

like pups in puddles.

But there was no Mum to give us a hot bath and a mug of Bovril at the end of it,

just the rum ration at night

if we were lucky.

We were sharing a trench with some of the London Scottish at the time.

They didn’t trust us and we didn’t trust them.

They had suffered heavy losses and just wanted to go home,

while our lot were nervous of their thick accents

and their kilts. I remember one fellow,

an Aberdeen terrier -

ferocious little chap he was,

all moustache and eyebrows.

On the last day in October,

with a fog blowing across the trenches thick as any Blighty peasouper,

I came across him sitting on the firestep,

hacking away at something with his bayonet.

A turnip, I reckoned

- we bought, begged or stole them from the farmers sometimes,

when the supply trains hadn’t made it through and even root vegetables looked like a bit of all right.

“Hullo, Jock,” I said

(we called them all Jock, of course, but this one’s name really was Jock).

“What are you up to?”

He glared at me from under those bushy black brows.

“I’m makin’ a jacky-lantern,”

he said, scornfully,

as if any fool should have known that.

“Tae keep the bogles away.

It’s All Hallows’ Eve, ye ken.”

I didn’t ken, but I looked more closely.

He had hollowed out the turnip,

which must have been quite an undertaking,

and carved a face into it,

punching holes for the eyes, nose and mouth.

It was good artwork,

but not a very nice face -

evil, I’d have called it.

I couldn’t imagine why anyone would spend hours making an ugly thing like that.

The Captain came by just then.

I felt my back straighten and my tail start to wag -

he had that effect on us. “Hello,

Pinch. What’s going on here?”

“Captain ffox.” I saluted.

“This lad’s making some sort of lucky mascot.”

Jock spat. I turned to lay into him for his rudeness in front of the Captain,

but ffox laid a paw on my arm.

“Tell me more, Jock,”

he said, interest in his eyes.

It was a while since I’d seen the Captain interested in anything.

The last week had been tough on us

and we’d had a few blokes go West.

The final straw had come that morning, when young Tibbs failed to return from a patrol.

He was always full of tricks, and we all liked him -

even me, and I’ve never been that keen on cats.

We couldn’t believe he had gone,

told ourselves he was playing a joke on us,

but we all knew it wasn’t true.

Captain ffox took it hard -

he always did when any of his chaps bought it, and Tibbs had been a favourite.

“It’s for the bogles,”

Jock said again. “It would be a damn sight more useful if it worked on Jerries,”

I put in. “Shush, Pinch!

Let him tell us.” The Scot brushed peelings from his lap and pulled a stump of candle from his pocket.

He had the deuce of a time getting a match to light,

but when he had he melted the end of the candle a little,

stuck it in the base of the turnip, and lit it.

He replaced the turnip top so it acted like a lid,

and set the whole works down on the firestep beside him.

The candlelight flickered through the holes in its face.

It was eerie enough to make the fur stand up on my spine,

and I felt myself wanting to growl.

The other lads had started to gather,

drawn by the light,

and were watching silently.

“Back home, we’d set the jacky-lantern

in the window tae ward off the beasties and the unquiet spirits,”

the little terrier explained.

It should have sounded daft,

but something about his low Scottish rasp

and the bright eyes gleaming under his shaggy brows gave him authority.

There was silence while we all imagined just how many unquiet spirits might be hanging around a battlefield.

I could have sworn I felt their breath on the back of my neck,

and I began to see awful shapes

prowling in the foggy dark.

Watching the faces of the others in the flickering candlelight,

I knew they were thinking it too.

Captain ffox looked at us,

and I saw his tail twitch just the slightest bit

with mischief. “That reminds me of something that happened when I was a cub,” he said.

“Would you care to hear about it?”

I tell you, those lads lit up like it was Christmas.

Some of them were mere kits, really,

and I’d never felt it so keenly as when they gathered around the Captain for their story.

The Padre arrived just then,

looking weary as always with his rudder dragging in the mud.

When he saw the eager ring of soldiers around ffox,

he stood himself next to me and watched.

I haven’t had a lot of time for religion since the Second Loos,

but the Padre was a good sort.

I’d seen him lift his end of a stretcher while the Minnies were coming down,

and I’d seen him out in No Man’s Land holding the paws of the cases that didn’t need stretchers any more.

The Captain settled himself in the entrance to the dugout,

with his tail curled cosily around him and the jacky-lantern on his knee.

He had its face towards his audience,

and to No Man’s Land.

Enemy snipers could target the flare of a lucifer from a quarter mile,

but there was little enough danger tonight that the faint flicker would be spotted.

“I warn you,” he said,

“it’s a scary tale!

It will chill your blood!”

Their chuckles weren’t the chuckles of carefree cubs at their uncle’s knee,

but of soldiers whose short lives have been filled with blood-chilling sights already.

At least they were laughing

—that made a change.

I felt bad that I was going to spoil it for them, but I couldn’t help myself

—I didn’t feel comfortable about the business,

or about everyone being distracted when we should have been on watch.

“I don’t reckon you should go telling any ghost stories,”

I said. The lads muttered and groaned, but I pressed on.

“Why invent horror

when there’s more than enough all around you?

It’s not right. Anyway, you shouldn’t spout all that heathen nonsense in front of the Padre here.”

“On the contrary, Lieutenant Pinch.

In the days when few could read or write,

ghost stories were used by the Church as a way to pass on the teachings of the Bible.”

The otter laid his paw briefly on ffox’s head.

“By all means tell the children their story, my child.

I think we could all do with it.”

Someone had to stay sensible,

so I parked myself on the fire-step to keep a lookout.

The enemy liked to attack just after dusk.

The weather was so filthy that I couldn’t imagine them trying anything,

but you never knew.

Though my ears were swivelled towards the opposing lines,

I couldn’t help hearing ffox’s tale all the same,

though I tried hard not to.

The truth is I’ve never really liked ghost stories

—not since my brother Robby and I were pups and he used to scare me so much I’d wet the bed.

The joke was on him, because we had to share…

“Where I grew up, in Padshire,

there was a big beech wood,” he began.

“I played there with my friend Grace, a kitten from the farm nearby,

whenever I could.

There were trees to be climbed,

streams to be dammed,

and boggy bits to be poked with a stick.”

I sneaked a look over my shoulder.

From the expression on his muzz

he was back romping through his woods that very minute,

and the lads were in similar places of their own.

“The area had an evil reputation in the village,

and I wasn’t allowed there after sunset,”

ffox continued. “My people said it was because the bogs and streams were dangerous in the dark,

and I might lose my way among the trees.

They wouldn’t have admitted to believing any yokel superstitions.

But Grace and I listened to the stories whenever we could.

We were fascinated.

“It was haunted, of course,”

the Captain said carelessly, as if discussing the weather.

“Plenty of folks were happy to swear they’d seen a ghost among the trees.

Most of them were sane,

and some of them were even sober.

The descriptions varied,

but everyone agreed the ghastly spectre was a light

bobbing about in the distance.

Some said it was at ground level,

some said the height of a lantern held in a paw,

others that it floated above the trees.

It was white, or yellowish,

or maybe greenish.

Nobody ever got near enough to see it in any more detail than that.

At least, nobody saw it close to and went on to tell the tale afterwards.”

His voice was solemn,

but his eyes twinkled.

“Bob-a-longs!” one of the privates burst out.

“That’s what we called ‘em when I was a nipper!”

“We had one too! We called it the Hobby Lantern!”

“Peg-a-lantern,” whispered a young rabbit from the lowlands.

“Ours was the Waller-Wups.”

“Pisky-lights!” put in a badger from Cornwall

who had barely spoken a word since he arrived.

Then someone muttered

“Corpse-candles!” and,

staring into the fog,

I thought of a thousand thousand floating lights,

one for every soul buried out there in the mud.

I scratched myself fierce behind the ear until the picture dispelled.

Captain ffox held up his paw

and the babble ceased instantly.

“Well, in my village,”

he said firmly, “she was Jenny-Burnt

-Tail. One story was that she had sold her soul to the Devil centuries before,

and been condemned to wander the world ever since,

with only a little candle for light and warmth.

In a rival legend,

she had committed a crime so dreadful that the Devil set her, er...”

I heard the Padre chuckle beside me,

and knew ffox had shot him an anxious glance.

“Her hindquarters

on fire. Anyway, it was said she lured unwary travellers away from the path,

leading them on to be sucked down in the bog and drowned. ‘Drownded’,

Grace’s father always called it,

which made it sound even more exciting.

“But there were those who said she was a fairy who guarded a great treasure,

and if you managed to track her to the spot,

you could find wealth beyond your wildest dreams.”

ffox grinned. “Can you guess what Grace and I decided to do?”

“Find the treasure!”

That was the Cornish badger again.

“Absolutely correct!

We planned it for the Michaelmas half-term,

when the nights were drawing in.

All week we collected candle ends, scraps of food,

and anything else we thought we’d need for the expedition,

like a length of rope

and a toy pistol.

We hid our loot in Grace’s barn.

The rest of our time was spent drawing up maps and plans.

It was all going to be terribly scientific.

Grace had even persuaded one of her brothers to lend her his box Brownie so we could photograph the ghost

—in return for a month’s pocket money.”

He paused to listen as a shell screamed overhead.

The crump, when it came, was half a mile or so distant,

rippling the muddy water under the duckboards.

Some other poor sod’s turn to get it, tonight.

“The night we had chosen was a Friday.

I put my pyjamas on over my clothes

and kept myself awake by biting my tail whenever I started to nod off.

At last I heard Pater and Mater go to their bedrooms.

I gave them a few minutes to fall asleep,

then crept out in my stockings,

holding a boot in each paw.

I used the scullery door,

helping myself to a leg of cold chicken on the way.

“It was a windy night,

with clouds boiling across the crescent moon.

The trees along the drive cast weird shadows,

and their branches rustled.

Ghost-hunting suddenly seemed a lot less appealing,

but I thought of Grace waiting for me at the farm,

and how I didn’t want her to think I was a coward.

“The track seemed much longer than it did in daylight,

but at last the barn loomed up

and I made out Grace’s white paws and muzzle.

She denied being afraid, or cold,

when I asked, but all her fur was fluffed up.

I don’t mind admitting we held paws for safety as we stole off towards the woods.

As soon as we were out of earshot of the farm we both started giggling like a pair of lunies.

“In daylight I knew those woods like the back of my paw,

but nighttime was a very different proposition.

The black branches seemed to loom low over us,

and the roots slithered along the ground like snakes to trip us up.

It was a novelty at first, and it was fun to clutch each other and shriek whenever the leaves rustled or an owl hooted,

but by the time we had wandered for an hour or so we’d had just about enough.

The clouds had grown thicker, hiding the moon,

and the wind was rising too.

We were cold and bored,

we had bumped our heads and barked our shins,

we were running out of candle ends and our food supplies were gone.

Naturally we hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Jenny-Burnt-Tail,

or anything else.

Neither of us wanted to be the first to suggest we go home,

but when I saw Grace was shivering I pronounced the expedition a failure.

We agreed to try again in the Christmas holidays,

and we set off for home.”

He rubbed his nose.

“The trouble with walking through trees, of course,

is it’s so terribly easy to lose one’s bearings.”

There was a low murmur of laughter;

we had all had that experience in the army.

“I had ‘borrowed’ Pater’s compass,

but a compass isn’t much use if you’re not quite sure in which direction home lies.

We tried to keep walking in a straight line,

on the grounds that the wood had to end at some point,

but we seemed to have been going for hours

and despite the comfort of the compass,

I was horribly afraid we were going round in circles.

Our yelps and giggles were forced, now,

and high-pitched.

“I was holding our last piece of candle,

which had burned down to a stub.

I mis-stepped in the dark, and some hot wax dripped on to my paw.

Before I could help myself I had dropped the candle into a puddle,

where it fizzled and went out.

In the utter blackness,

I fell to my knees and groped frantically around,

plunging my paws into the muddy water.

After some frantic scrabbling I pulled out the half-inch of beeswax.

I was soaked to the elbows, but I didn’t care.

There was something else in my paw, too -

a coin, it felt like.

I slipped it into my pocket

and drew out my matchbox.

“The first two I tried wouldn’t strike,

and I was starting to panic.

I scratched lucifer number three hard and fast against the side of the box,

and it flared into life.

As it did, we saw something white hanging in the air,

glowing in the phosphorescent flash.

“It might have been the very thing we had come to see,

but it terrified us out of our wits.

Certainly neither of us thought to take a snapshot.

We turned tail and ran,

candle and matches dropping from my terrified paws.

The sudden blackness made me stop

and think. “’Grace, stop!’

I called. ‘It was only an owl!

Grace! Come back!’ I like to think I was more worried about her safety

than I was about myself,

lost and alone in the dark.

“There was an earsplitting yowl,

a shriek of pure feline terror.

I sprinted towards the noise,

but something grabbed my ankle and I flew through the air to hit my head against a tree.

My eyes were filled with dazzling white light

before the darkness deepened

and wrapped around me like a shroud.

“The next thing I remember

was Grace shaking my shoulder, calling

‘Benty! Benty, wake up!

Don’t be dead, Benty!’”

He snapped back to the present.

“Grace’s pet name for me was Benty,”

he said, “because when we were small she couldn’t pronounce my given name of ‘Bentley’.

I will thank you not to laugh.”

“Go on, Sir,” I called.

“Oh, so you are listening, after all, are you, Pinch?

Good show! Very well, then.

In her other paw was the candle, lit.

Grace helped me to sit up against the tree,

and I saw we were on the edge of a deep bog.

If I hadn’t tripped, I would have rushed headlong into it.

“’Look, Benty, quick!’

Grace was babbling. ‘The

lady!’ I looked where she was pointing,

but there was nothing there. ‘Oh,’

she said, sounding disappointed, ‘she’s

gone!’ “’It was only a stupid old owl,’

I said crossly (my

head and ankle were hurting a great deal).

“’No,’ Grace insisted, ‘it

was a lady cat.

And her tail was on fire.’

“According to Grace,

this cat lady had appeared floating in the air before her,

a ball of pale fire surrounding its tail.

That was what had made her cry out,

but the thing had held up its paw

as if to stop her from running,

and it had smiled.

Grace picked up the candle and lit it

at that flaming tail

as if it had been a gas bracket.

Then the lady led her to where I lay

full-length on the muddy ground.

While Grace was tending to me,

Jenny-Burnt-Tail had disappeared.

“There was a bump on my head the size of a golf ball,

and I couldn’t put any weight on my right leg.

I told Grace to leave me and bring help, but she wouldn’t.

So I put my arm around her shoulders -

I don’t know how she managed to support me -

and we lurched off together.

Within a couple of minutes we were out of the woods, and I saw a light in the distance.

A proper, honest, earthly light, with nothing weird about it.

We could hear voices calling,

and when we drew closer we could make out Grace’s name.

It was her parents and brothers,

out searching. We were saved.

“Grace’s father whipped her, I believe, and I carry the guilt of that to this day.

My own people reckoned a crocked ankle right in the middle of rugger season to be punishment enough,

and I suspect Pater was secretly proud of my daring.

“Did we really encounter the famous and dreaded Jenny-Burnt-Tail that night?

I didn’t see what Grace saw, of course.

She still swears she was telling the truth.

But it was dark and we were children,

overtired and in a state of nerves.

Nothing happened that couldn’t be explained away by the overactive imaginations of two

silly, frightened little creatures.

The cold clutch I felt around my ankle was undoubtedly a tree root.

I was amazed Grace had managed to find me,

but cats’ eyes are keener in the dark than fox ones,

and perhaps the moon had come out for a spell.

In her panic she couldn’t remember

finding the matches in my jacket pocket and lighting the candle, although

that is what she must have done.

Even Jenny-Burnt-Tail herself—yes,

and the Hobby-Lantern,

the Bob-A-Longs and all the rest

—are, I have since learned,

most likely balls of flaming marsh gas.

“There were no more sightings of Jenny-Burnt-Tail after that

—at least, none that I heard tell of.

Looking back, I suspect Lord ffox put a stop to the village talk,

pointing out how dangerous it had been for his son to venture into the woods on a ghost hunt.

“Tell you a peculiar thing, though.

That coin I found in the bog

—it was gold. Not fairy gold,

but an Elizabethan sovereign.

Worth enough to pay off Grace’s pocket money debt and more,

but I couldn’t bring myself to have it sold

and I kicked up a stink when Mater suggested she look after it for me.

I bored a hole in it

so I could wear it around my neck.

In fact...” I heard a murmur of excitement,

and peeped round to see.

ffox had undone the top button of his tunic

and was fishing out a length of chain.

He dangled the heavy gold disc

so it revolved slowly,

glinting in the light from the jacky-lantern.

From the corner of my eye

I caught an answering flash

out in No Man’s Land.

“Look!” I barked before I could help myself.

Hovering eerily a couple of feet above the ground,

turning the fog around it from grey to silver,

was a ball of white light.

“Gas?” The Captain’s paw went to the canvas bag slung on his shoulder.

“Masks on, all of you, just in case.”

He stood up, the jacky-lantern tumbling from his lap.

Jock made a dive and caught it,

clutching it to his chest as if he thought it could protect him from a gas attack.

I had to put the silly sod’s helmet on for him.

We all looked a proper gang of horrors then,

enough to make anyone think they’d seen a ghost,

with our shapeless heads and huge, glassy eyes.

My breath rasped in my ears as I took in the stale air with its tang of chemicals.

Seen through mica eyepieces,

the strange light was yellowy and distorted.

“If that’s gas, Sir,

it’s like no gas I’ve seen before,”

I said around the exhaust valve.

“I don’t like it.” “Me neither, Pinch.”

“Maybe it’s a new weapon?

Something along the lines of those flaming onions?”

ffox nodded. “Whatever it is, I’m not running the risk of it coming into the trench and wiping us all out.

I need a volunteer.”

From the looks on the lads’ faces

he might as well have asked them to strip naked,

cover themselves in luminous paint and turn cartwheels across No Man’s Land.

On an ordinary day

Captain ffox could have convinced them to do it and all.

But that night, in that fog,

with that story fresh in their minds,

there were no takers.

“Looks like you and me, then, Sir,”

I said, shaking my head at the platoon.

“Wouldn’t have had it any other way, Pinch,”

the Captain replied.

And I was glad I was going with him,

even if it should be to my death.

“They’ve got the wind up proper,”

I muttered as we shinned up the ladders.

“Yes. I hope I didn’t do wrong

—I thought that silly tale would take their minds off things.”

“It was a good story,

Sir. You had them eating out of your paw when you pulled out that sov

—even though you could have got it anywhere.”

“Pinch, you old cynic!”

he laughed. “Are you calling me a liar?”

I had the wind up properly myself,

but it wouldn’t have done to let the lads see.

I was sure we were on a fool’s errand.

At worst we were walking into the jaws of a trap.

Or the snipers would get us before we even reached the source of the mysterious light.

At best we would get tired,

cold and wet for no good reason,

perhaps lost into the bargain.

Grumbling to myself about the very real perils

kept my mind off any supernatural ones.

I’ve been less afraid going over the top under enemy fire

than I was walking towards that

eerie light. Anyway,

we slogged through the churned-up earth in silence,

freezing when a star shell went up

and pausing occasionally to cut a strand of barbed wire.

The light seemed to grow no closer

but continued to bob on the spot, silently,

mocking us. If it really was an evil spirit

bent on luring us to our doom,

it had an easy job.

A waterlogged shell hole would do the trick nicely,

or a landmine. I would have cut my own throat before voicing any of these speculations to the Captain, though.

At last the light grew larger,

until it was hovering just over the next ridge.

Another few paces and we could have reached out to touch it.

The hollow beneath looked full of menacing, moving shapes in its flickering glow.

I bristled, one paw on my revolver.

I didn’t intend to let any ghost take my soul before I’d had a pop at it with a .455 cartridge. ffox looked at me keenly.

“Lieutenant Albert Pinch,

you’re afraid. Terrified, in fact.”

“Sir.” There was no point denying it.

“You didn’t turn your back on my story because you thought it was nonsense,

but because you thought it was going to frighten you.

You! My word.” I waited for him to tease me like Robby,

but he clasped my paw in his

and clapped the other to my shoulder.

“I’m lucky to have you, Pinch,”

he said. “Thank you, Sir.”

I was grateful the night hid the hotness in my jowls and ears.

At that moment the light went out like a snuffed candle.

The darkness was absolute,

and I blinked to dispel the lingering dazzle in my eyes.

“I’ve had about enough of this, Captain,”

I said. “Let’s go back while we still can.”

“You’re right, Pinch.

I’m sorry to have dragged you out here.”

Before we could move,

there was a faint cry from below.

“Who’s there?” I snapped.

“Me, Sir. Corporal Tibbs.”

He’s a ghost, I thought,

briefly, wildly. And if he had come back,

what about all the others

—Wills and Watkin and Taffy and the rest?

Then the Captain was scrambling down the ridge,

and I followed. By the time I arrived he was cradling Tibbs’s head,

tipping brandy from his hip flask into the tabby’s mouth.

“You look as if you could do with a swig of this, too, Pinch.”

I didn’t deny it,

and took the flask gratefully.

“Can you walk if I help you, old chap?”

There was a bullet hole clean through his leg.

Provided he hadn’t lost too much blood,

and gangrene didn’t set in,

he would live to tell the tale.

And knowing Tibbs,

he’d make it a funny one.

I put a field dressing on and we lifted him between us,

hobbling along like some strange five-legged beast.

A beastie, perhaps, or even a bogle.

“Just like when Grace helped me out of the woods all those years ago, Pinch,”

ffox said over the tabby’s drooping head.

“That really did happen, I promise you.

How are you managing, Tibbs?

Keep those eyes open, that’s the ticket.

Don’t go falling asleep on us.

I say, it was jolly lucky you lit that flare.

We’d never have found you without it.”

Tibbs roused a little at that.

“Didn’t light any flare, Sir.

I was out cold till your voices roused me.”

His head slumped again.

ffox and I looked at each other for a long moment,

and I felt the fur lift along my spine.

“If anyone asks, Pinch,

better say the Corporal sent up a light.”

“Yes, Captain ffox, Sir!”

From our trench, so faint you wouldn’t have seen it if you hadn’t been looking for it,

the jacky-lantern shone

to guide us back.

This was “Jenny-Burnt-Tail”

by Huskyteer read for you by the author herself,

as part of a special Halloween presentation

called The Ghost Of Dog.

As always,You can find more stories on the web at thevoice.dog,

or find the show wherever you get your podcasts.

Thank you for listening to The Voice of Dog.