Title: Ghosts
Author: KCS
Characters: Holmes, Watson
Rating: K
Word Count: 100 each
Warnings: :(
Summary: No ghosts need apply, but they do linger sometimes.
Author's Notes: This idea came to me about a week ago, when I was visiting in a nursing home and suddenly rounded a corner onto a man who looked just almost exactly (freakishly so) like my favorite grandpa, who passed away three years ago. The mind is a scary thing when startled by something like that...

He was unsure what in particular caught his eye. A flash of blue, a glint of golden hair, girlish laughter, sweet attendance on the elderly woman? – but he suddenly found himself frozen on the railway platform, transfixed in confused memory as she exited the compartment. Vaguely he knew Holmes stumbled into his back, apologised, then voiced a puzzled inquiry.

Finally, numbly, he registered both that it was a cruel – mercilessly cruel – impossibility, and that he was staring quite rudely. Thankfully more flattered than annoyed at the open attention, she smiled shyly in his direction, and then vanished into the crowd.

--

"Easy, Watson – I did not mean to startle you," Holmes was saying, having relinquished his arm after he had jumped, the trance broken.

He shivered under the detective's concerned scrutiny. "Sorry, Holmes. I…thought I recognised someone," he muttered, bending to retrieve his dropped bag.

A thin hand beat him to the valise-handle. "You are as pale as paper, Watson…Did you?" Holmes asked gently, as they continued train-ward.

As the whistle blew, his whispered "Perhaps" was lost to the noise but not to Holmes, and the detective knew better than to leave the ghost-ridden compartment for the duration of the journey.