11-year-old Sharon knew the park bench was haunted, and by who.

 

“Ah, Shally, good to see you girl,” said the phantom hologram of transparent blue.

 

“Hello grandad,” Sharon said, feet swinging over the sides of the bench, catching the morning sun.

 

“Tell me, girl, what have you been up to?”

 

“Well,” she said, shyly, “I’ve been looking after myself, as you said.”

 

“Good, good,” he smiled, his shape swaying as the hologram’s light faltered. His image had made immortal his comfy fleece, glasses and slippers. All he needed was his pipe and newspaper.

 

“I’m here every year on this day still, as you said.”

 

“Good, good.”

 

“Are ever going to tell me, why?”

 

The hologram paused. Then, “Ah Shally, good to see you, girl.”

 

But he never looked at her in the eyes, just out towards the lake.

 

Sharon sighed. “You know, I will always miss you, grandad.”

 

* * *

 

 

14-year-old Sharon sat by the hologram of her grandad one afternoon.

 

They looked out to the lake together, one seeing more than the other. Her eyes glistened when she tried to hold her grandad's hand, hers falling through.

 

“Sharon, there you are,” said her tired mother, stomping over to her, “Why do you persist?”

 

“I promised,” she said, looking away.

 

“Nothing will come of it,” said her mother, watching a hover boat whirr over the lake. “It’s not as if his pre-recorded lines will become less limited.”

 

“Martin at school says some holograms have some intelligence programmed into them. Maybe grandad’s -”

 

“Grandad is gone. You’re just grasping at a ghost. Like your dad and his hopes to get a decent job. Now come on. I don’t like having to come out here to fetch you.”

 

“But you knew where I’d be,” Sharon smiled.

 

“Lucky guess,” her mother scowled. Then when she noticed her daughter wasn’t moving, her face softened, “Look. I know you loved your grandad. Always playing games. Hunting for treasure. But time fades things away. Although sometimes, we can remember what time has taken from us. The bench is there, if anything, for that. Now come on, your tea is getting cold.”

 

* * *

 

Seven years later, a different girl is on the bench, with the same ghost.

 

Her mascara is running with her leaking response to the life that has come to her, but she still does what she had promised, to be here on one day a year, on her grandad’s memorial bench.

 

It is night, and the lake in front of the bench reflects the unfeeling stars.

 

“Ah, Shally, good to see you, girl,”

 

“Yes grandad,” she says quietly. “You know, it would be a lot less bloody painful to

keep up my side of the promise if it wasn’t just you that stayed the same. But time kills

you.” She takes a deep breath in, “Time kills you.”

 

“Time.”

 

Sharon sniffs. “What?”

 

“Time. It is time.”

 

Light shoots from the eyes of the hologram and hits the water. Sharon stands up, takes out her phone and takes a picture. It doesn’t take her long to realise it’s a map.

 

She walks through the park, past other benches, some of them with their memorial holograms already switched on. She tries to avoid thinking that they were watching her. She follows the map to the surrounding woods.

 

Within the woods, Sharon projects the map where it told her, which happens to be a particular tree. A small door opens on the tree, revealing a beeping light. Sharon snatches it, thinking it looks very much like a hologram light.

 

She returns to her grandad’s bench, and slots on her new find on the hologram emitter of her grandad. The hologram shines brighter.

 

“You have found the treasure.”

 

“Get in there!” Sharon fist pumps the air.

 

“Time.”

 

“Errr…what?”

 

“You have used your time. You have committed to honour the dead, and your memory of me. By honouring that promise, you have cemented the pathway to becoming a virtuous person.”

 

Sharon stares at her grandad’s ghost, the memorial hologram her late mother had spent the last of her savings to build. She had left no more money for a bench of her own. Sharon’s eyes prickle with tears. “Seriously?”

 

“There are things built-in character that are more than gold.”

 

Sharon feels herself fall, although she is still standing. Then she nods. “In the end, I guess, I’ve wasted more of it doing worse. With all that –”

 

“Time,” says the hologram. He holds out his watch to her.

 

“Yes I know, I know,” she says, nodding.

 

“You were always my treasure. This is just a little of something less worthy,” he says, and she looks at the watch. Numbers glint gold. A code for her inheritance that had been thought lost.

 

Sharon feels a surge of both warm and cold. She looks down into the darker grass.

 

“Thank you.” It’s a reward shadowed by shame.

 

Before the pre-recorded hologram of her grandfather dies, he looks at her and says, “Time will tell.”