Hauntings

Kindle edition, published June 2012

by NewCon Press

in association with Un:Bound

Compilation copyright © 2012 by Ian Whates

Introduction copyright © 2012 by Adele Wearing

“Don’t Listen” copyright © 2012 by Ian Whates

“The Cradle in the Corner” copyright © 2012 by Marie O’Regan

“On the Grey Road” copyright © 2012 by Alison Littlewood

“Not a Cat Person” copyright © 2012 by Adrian Tchaikovsky

“Fog on the Old Coast Road” copyright © 2012 by Mark West

“Dark Peak” copyright © 2012 by Kim Lakin-Smith

“The Things I See” copyright © 2012 by Theresa Derwin

“Presence” copyright © 2012 by Paul Kane

“Starcross” copyright © 2012 by Liz Williams

“Forward and Back, Change Places” copyright © 2012 by Marion Pitman

“Long Dene Mill” copyright © 2012 by Sarah Singleton

“The White Otter” copyright © 2012 by Amanda Hemingway

“The Ghost (In Two Letters)” copyright © 2012 by Tanith Lee

“The Scariest Place in the World” copyright © 2012 by Mark Morris

“Simon Harries” copyright © 2012 by Robert Shearman

All rights reserved.

Also available as

ISBN: 978-1-907069-41-3 (hardback)

978-1-907069-42-0 (softback)

Cover art by Ben Baldwin

Cover layout by Andy Bigwood

Text layout by Storm Constantine

eBook design by Tim C. Taylor

Hauntings

Edited by Ian Whates

NewCon Press

England

Contents:

Introduction – Adele Wearing

Don’t Listen – Ian Whates

The Cradle in the Corner – Marie O’Regan

On the Grey Road – Alison Littlewood

Not a Cat Person – Adrian Tchaikovsky

Fog on the Old Coast Road – Mark West

Dark Peak – Kim Lakin-Smith

The Things I See – Theresa Derwin

Presence – Paul Kane

Starcross – Liz Williams

Forward and Back, Change Places – Marion Pitman

Long Dene Mill – Sarah Singleton

The White Otter – Amanda Hemingway

The Ghost (In Two Letters) – Tanith Lee

The Scariest Place in the World – Mark Morris

Simon Harries – Robert Shearman

About the Authors

Hauntings: An Introduction

Adele Wearing

It’s a huge honour as a reader and a fan to be introducing this book of ghost stories, which makes me think that perhaps I should explain how I came to be doing so.

Hauntings the book grew out Un:Bound Video Editions #3 (also called “Hauntings”) which was organised in conjunction with NewCon Press. Held in the atmospheric country pub The Staff Of Life, the event featured five ghost stories read out by the authors. But before I go further, let me go back a little way and, with your indulgence, tell the whole story.

In 2010 I posed the question ‘why are TV book shows so dull’. The then soon-to-be UBVE scriptwriter/director/editor Vincent Holland-Keen pointed out that it’s difficult to make a written medium, such as books, appealing in a primarily visual media. We agreed, however, that it should be possible to do and what’s more, we might perhaps attract a new audience by exposing video aficionados to the stories. In typical Un:Bound style we decided if no one else was doing it we would; and so Video Editions was born.

The initial plan was a magazine style show, so we filmed at the ‘Other Worlds’ event with Alt.Fiction and Tor, recorded interviews and magic tricks at Tor Towers, we even roped Lee Harris and Alasdair Stuart in for news items and a feature on query letters. The end product UBVE#1 Tor – looked pretty good, ran for about 45 minutes and worked as a one off. On reflection we felt the format wouldn’t be so effective for multiple shows and so a rethink was required.

After a few false starts and delays we developed a new plan. Pick a subject, find willing authors who write in that field, couch a round table discussion in a short film. We started with UBVE#2 Zombies. It’s not the first time Leicester has had a Zombie apocalypse, but it’s the first time popular authors have been victims. Now we had a show that was under half an hour and a format with long term potential.

Ghost stories were quickly settled on for UBVE#3. Since the filming of #2 had turned into a mini event with volunteers involved in the filming, and as ghost stories lend themselves so well to being an event, we expanded the remit for #3. Instead of simply inviting authors to be filmed and do the round table, we would find a suitable venue and ask them to tell stories first. We could film the story telling and release it separately from the video edition, but it would be a great way to combine filming with an evening event for fans. Then, because this is Un:Bound and we can’t help ourselves, the idea of an ebook was suggested. As soon as this was mentioned there was only one way to go: Newcon Press. The quality of their anthologies and Ian’s sense of fun were exactly the fit we would need for such a venture. So filming of UBVE#3 would also act as a launch event for the NewCon Anthology ebook featuring the stories told on the night. So Hauntings was born.

Why ghost stories? Not only are they one of horror’s most enduring tropes, but for many of us they are a childhood favourite. I remember being fixated by the Usbourne Guide and books of True Ghost Stories as a child, a fascination that never entirely went away. I spent lunchtimes devouring tales of screaming skulls and killer houses, of ghostly faces in windows (for years I couldn’t pass a darkened window at anything less than a run). Even now, nothing in horror pleases me so much as a good old fashioned haunted house, in book or on film. The ghostly twins in The Shining are still terrifying to me and of all short story collections the ghostly ones are most likely to find a home on my shelves.

Maybe it’s because ghosts can get you anywhere; it’s doesn’t need to be personal and locking the door doesn’t make you safe, but there seems to be a universal appeal to the chill of a haunting. You don’t even have to be a horror fan to love them it seems. Like urban legends, ghost stories are shared and traded growing up, part of the oral tradition that still exists in playgrounds and around campfires. You aren’t required to believe in them, a well told tale will have its effect even on the most determined cynic and they are at their best in more than one format: read privately or out loud to a rapt audience.

With that in mind, here in Hauntings Ian Whates has commissioned a variety of spooky tales, with new and well known authors brought together to send shivers down your spine. Lock the doors, light the fire, pull up the covers and settle in with this fantastic collection of original stories.

Adele Wearing

February 2012

Adele Wearing is fearless leader of Un:Bound and Un:Bound Video Editions. The videos from the ‘Hauntings’ event can be viewed at www.unboundve.com

Don’t Listen

Ian Whates

The following story was initially adlibbed in front of a live audience at The Staff of Life pub in Mowsley, Leicestershire, on Sunday 11th March 2012, built around an idea and a few crib notes. This, the written version, has been produced by listening back to a recording of that performance.

The story I’m going to share with you this evening concerns the composer, Edmund Banaway. Some of you may recall the name, though perhaps not, since fame and Banaway were never more than passing acquaintances. He was a contemporary of George Frederick Handel and, indeed, it’s said he was greatly jealous of the other’s success.

For all that, Banaway did enjoy a very brief flirtation with success himself. This was in 1723, at a time when Handel was already established as composer for the Chapel Royal and as a director of the newly founded Royal Academy of Music. Banaway caught the eye, or perhaps in this instance the ear, of a wealthy aristocrat, who offered to become his patron.

Our story really starts as Banaway was on his way to London to meet with his new patron. He was understandably excited, seeing this as his big chance – an opportunity to shine and to gain the recognition which he was convinced his talent deserved. He travelled by coach, choosing to break his journey at an inn en route. The name of the establishment doesn’t greatly matter, but know that this was an old inn, a country inn, with exposed beams, tiled floor, and an open fire, much like the one we’re in now. If you wish to think of it as The Staff of Life, by all means do.

While Banaway sat in the coach, being carried through the rich English countryside made vibrant by summer, he felt inspired by the beauty of the landscape that unfolded around him, and a piece of music began to take shape in his mind. He quickly realised that this unlooked for tune was something special. He knew it to be more beautiful than anything he’d ever written before, or even heard before.

Upon arriving at the inn, Banaway ate heartily – a meal of mutton pie washed down with local ale – but he didn’t linger in the common room, anxious to retreat to his own quarters as swiftly as possible. Once there, he sat down at the small writing desk, spread parchment before him, and began to write. He did so feverishly, like a man possessed, desperate to put down onto paper the music that had come to him so vividly on the journey. As he wrote, he was overcome by a sense of well-being and light-headed delight. The music came easily; it welled-up from somewhere deep within, from his very soul, flowing through his body and along his arm to take shape, via his hand and the quill it held, on the parchment before him. He had never experienced anything like this before: this sense that he was no more than a conduit, merely there to facilitate the birth of the music; and he knew that what he created in that room was magical, beyond anything the world had heard before.

He lost track of time, writing long into the night. Eventually, in the small hours of morning, it was done. Oh, a little work was still needed: orchestration to be added and refinements to be made, but in essence the piece was complete, there on the desk before him.

He went to bed, exhausted but elated.

Because of that exhaustion, he could not have commented on the comfort or otherwise of the inn’s bed. He fell into a deep, deep sleep.

In the morning, when he awoke, the same zeal still burned within him and, naturally enough, the first thing he wanted to do was review his work of the previous night. However, to his dismay, he found that the desk was empty. His masterpiece, the work that was going to secure his place in history, had disappeared.

A whole welter of emotions coursed through him: disbelief, fear, fury. He searched desperately, ransacking the room as his frustration mounted, but to no avail. He roused the landlord and his wife, who joined in the search, though with no more success than he’d enjoyed, and they in turn woke their staff and the other guests. Soon, everyone at the inn was involved. However, the precious score still failed to materialise.

The landlord, determined that no blame should attach to him, instantly dismissed the chambermaid, about whom he’d always held vague suspicions, declaring that she was most certainly the culprit, but the score was still nowhere to be found.

Eventually, still in turmoil, Banaway reluctantly resumed his journey to London without his masterpiece, though he did so with heavy heart. At the first opportunity upon reaching the capital he attempted to recreate the work, to write it again, but whatever muse had visited during the first part of his trip had long since departed. He could achieve no more than a pale shadow of the perfection he had conjured that fateful night.

Sad to say that after this Banaway’s life went into swift decline. The patronage he had so coveted was quickly withdrawn, as he failed to produce any music that satisfied either the aristocrat or himself. The need to recreate that lost score consumed him; nothing else would do. It became an obsession that excluded all else, even such basic needs as physical wellbeing and hygiene. Banaway lost touch with reality and descended into a very dark and dire place, ending his days incarcerated in a mental institution.

But what of the music that so drove the composer? What happened to that precious score which had become both the centre and the bane of his life? The truth is, nobody knows; not with any certainty. The manuscript was never discovered, but many are of the opinion that it never left the inn.

There are two schools of thought for this. Some maintain that the chambermaid had indeed stolen the manuscript and hidden it within the building, intending to reclaim it later; but she was unable to do so having been sacked and banished from the inn. This meant, of course, that the manuscript remained where it was, to moulder and decay in its hiding place, becoming a part of the building’s structure. Others prefer a more pragmatic explanation, believing that the disappearance was due to a twist of fate. It was certainly a warm evening, and Banaway may well have slept with a window open. Perhaps a strong draft disturbed the manuscript, lifting it off the desk so that it fell to the floor and somehow slipped through a crack in the floorboards, to remain undiscovered thereafter.

We simply don’t know.

There is, however, circumstantial evidence that the music did indeed remain there, somewhere within the inn, that it seeped into the substance of the place to haunt it ever more. I say this because, in the centuries since, many people claim to have heard a snatch of music – a beautiful, haunting theme, just at the edge of their perception.

Take, for example, the sad case of Mary Weaver. Those of you who are local to the area may well have heard the name. Mary Weaver was hanged; in 1845, more than a hundred years after Banaway’s fateful stay at the inn. She was hanged for murder. Her victim was one Lizzie Wheeler. The two girls were around the same age and were said to have been firm friends. They worked together at the inn: Mary as chambermaid, Lizzie as barmaid. Both girls claimed to have heard, at different times, these beautiful snatches of music which had no obvious source. The pair became so entranced with the tune that both would hum it as they worked. The problem was that each had heard no more than snatches, and so they would hum a different tune, which, while clearly related to the other, was far from identical.

At first, this was a source of considerable merriment and light-hearted banter between the two, but as time passed attitudes hardened, with each girl claiming that her version was the correct one and that the other had clearly misheard. This led to ever more heated exchanges and growing acrimony, culminating in a blazing row. During the altercation, Mary, in front of several witnesses including the landlord, pushed Lizzie very deliberately and very forcefully down the stairs. Poor Lizzie landed hard, broke her neck, and never moved again.

There are many other anecdotal incidents that seem to support the theory that Banaway’s music may still haunt the inn; including a more contemporary example, which occurred less than fifty years ago, during the ‘Swinging Sixties’. This relates to the pop group Jerry Paul and the Jesters. I’m sure many of you will remember them, and, if you do, there’s a good chance that at this very moment the melody of their classic song, Love Leads Me On, is running through your mind. This, of course, was their big hit, reaching #2 in the charts during the summer of 1965, kept off the top only by the Beatles’ Help! For a while, Jerry Paul and the Jesters enjoyed huge success: they were mobbed in the streets and feted by the media; but their fame was short-lived. They were never able to repeat the success of Love Leads Me On and the fickle attention of media and fans alike soon shifted to the next overnight sensation.

In 1967, a scant two years after the song he’d written and performed had ridden so high in the charts, Jerry Paul was found dead in his hotel room; victim of a heroin overdose.

All this, of course, is well documented. What is perhaps less well known is that Love Leads Me On, the song that had brought Jerry and his band such a tantalising taste of the high life, was written here, in this very pub. Jerry was a local lad, as I’m sure you know, and he wrote the song one evening while sitting in the bar. He wrote it in one take; the tune came to him complete, the lyrics fell into place… It wasn’t quite done – the verses still needed a little refining and there were a few lyrics to be perfected – but the song, in essence, was there.

The problem – and this is according to Jerry’s official biographer – was that Jerry Paul came to hate that song. He despised it with a vengeance, because it wasn’t right. The melody which he incorporated into Love Leads Me On wasn’t quite the tune that he’d thought of while sitting in the bar that night. Close, perhaps, but an approximation all the same.

Jerry spent the rest of his brief life trying to correct his mistake, to get the tune right; a quest that drove him to distraction. In fact, it’s generally accepted that this was the cause of his dabbling with drugs; that he was determined to expand his consciousness and remember that night more clearly, to attain perfect recall and so revisit the snatch of music that had inspired him.

The biographer closes his volume with the dramatic claim that had Jerry not been in the pub to hear that elusive snippet of music, he may still have been alive today.

I could quote many other examples to suggest that something peculiar is present in this pub: a lingering echo of music lost; but none of these are as fully documented as the incidents I’ve mentioned; doubtless because they are less dramatic and so of less interest to those who record the events of history. Therefore, I won’t trouble you with them at this juncture.

I will, however, leave you with a request if I may. This evening, as you sit here enjoying a drink and the amiable company of friends, if you should happen to hear something in the scraping of a chair leg or the creaking of a door, perhaps wrapped within the gusting of the wind as you leave, or even in the sound of a hand pump being pulled as beer pours into a glass… Should you suspect that somewhere in these mundane sounds you catch the hint of a distinctive melody, don’t listen.

I know that you’ll want to. Human nature is such that you will doubtless be itching to fasten onto that sound, to isolate, define and identify it. It’s imperative that you resist any such temptation.

Both for the sake of your own sanity and for the sake of your family and loved ones, I beg you, please, don’t listen. Leave any attempt to capture the uncatchable to someone else, to someone who has less to lose than you do. Don’t Listen.

The Cradle in the Corner

Marie O’Regan

Mary stared in horror at the monstrosity standing before her.

“Do you like it?” Alan asked. He stood there, all proud of himself – chest puffed out, huge grin on his face. How was she supposed to destroy that?

She released a breath that shook on its way out into the world, surprised not to see actual smoke. Calm, woman. He thinks he’s done a good thing. “It’s… different, I’ll say that for it.”

The smile froze, and she rushed to smooth things over, make it better, as usual. He was only trying to do something nice. “I haven’t seen one like that before. Where’d you get it?”

The smile returned and Adam knelt by the cot, eager for his wife to share his enthusiasm. “In a little antique store in town; I know how much you love old things.”

She laughed. “It’s definitely got that going for it.”

Alan sat back, his face serious now. “I know this needs work, love, but that’s what I want – a project. And once it’s been painted, got the right drapes and stuff – you’ll see; it’ll be beautiful.” He leaned across and passed her a leaflet he’d picked up from the carpet. “See? That’s what it should look like when it’s done.”

The cot in the picture was far from today’s image of a wooden cot with bars up the sides and a high mattress. This one looked more like a laundry basket on legs; wire frame on crossed iron legs that resembled the bottom of a laundry rack – a precursor to today’s Moses basket, sort of. A cradle, rather than a cot, and in lamentable condition. Mary smiled, feeling slightly better – a cradle was only for a little while. “It’s beautiful, love. Will it be safe, though?”

He nodded. “Yep; by the time the baby’s big enough to sit up, she’ll have moved on to a cot. The cradle can be stored away at that point.” He looked up, then, eyes sparkling as he asked, “Where do you want it?”

Looking round the bedroom, with its low eaves and quirky corners, Mary was at a loss for a moment. Then she saw the perfect spot. There was a recess by the window on the east side of the room that featured a cushioned window seat that she could sit on while she fed the baby, or sang her to sleep. The window itself was double glazed, secure from draughts, and caught the sunrise every morning. “Over there,” she said. “In the corner, by the window.”

Alan grinned, and hefted the cradle over to the indicated spot, angling it so that it wasn’t too close to the window itself, yet would catch the sun’s warmth during the day. “Perfect,” he said. “Looks like it’s always been there.”

Mary shivered as a shadow passed in front of her, obscuring the sun and letting a sudden chill into the room. The cradle looked wrong, now – cold and hard –bare as it was of any drapes or covers. The metal seemed to darken before her eyes, and there was an odour of mildew, and decay. “Put it away for now, love,” she said, and moved away. “Let’s go downstairs and have a cuppa.”

Alan looked up, then, and frowned when he saw his wife. “You okay? You look really pale.”

She crossed her hands over her bump, protective of her child even as it kicked playfully against her palm, and backed towards the door. “I’m fine, just a headache…” then she was gone, her footsteps thudding down the stairs as she headed for the kitchen.

~*~

“Feeling better?”

Alan’s voice broke Mary’s concentration, and she blinked as she registered his presence. She was sitting in the rocking chair by the fireplace, rocking blankly back and forth as she stared into the dormant hearth – her concentration had been absolute, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember what she’d been thinking about. She nodded, and took the cup of tea he offered gratefully, cupping it in her hands, eager for warmth.

“I am, thanks,” she said. “I can’t think what came over me.”

“You’re bound to get queasy or achy now and again, I suppose,” he answered. “You’ve still got what, six weeks to go?”

“About that,” she agreed. “Maybe I just need something to eat.”

He grinned as he put a plate of toast beside her. “Thought you might say that.”

“You know me too well,” she said, “thanks, love.” She took a piece of toast and grinned as she sat back. “This baby’s going to be the size of a whale, I’m sure. All I do is eat.”

“It’s nice to see,” he answered. “At least you’re not being sick all the time now.”

“True.”

Mary cocked her head as something creaked overhead. “You know, we really ought to get those floorboards checked.” The noise came again, louder this time, as something moved across the bedroom floor.

Alan sat quiet, listening. “Either something’s wrong with the floorboards or the cat’s so heavy she sounds like a person, now.”

Mary choked on her toast, laughing. The laughter died when she saw Rags lying on the rug in front of the fire, looking like nothing more than a huge, furry cushion. “Definitely not Rags.”

There came the sound of a door closing, and then the house was quiet. Both Mary and Alan sat watching the cat, listening to the usual sounds – the clock on the mantel ticking, the boiler clicking on as the temperature dropped, water rushing in the pipes – but no more creaking overhead. For a moment Mary wondered if it might be sounds from next door, but then she remembered this cottage was detached. It had been their dream home, and they’d only bought it when they started trying for a baby.

“This is an old house,” Alan offered. “Bound to make noises; it’ll be the floorboards settling, or something like that.”

Mary nodded. “Must be.” She smiled, and turned to the toast again, her voice a little too bright as she continued, “Must be boards relaxing in the heat or something.”

~*~

Mary lay in bed that night, twisting and turning as she tried unsuccessfully to sink into a deep and blissful sleep. Alan lay next to her, snoring gently, oblivious to her restlessness. The cherry blossom tree in the garden cast shadows that walked across the walls and ceiling, spindly branches reaching for the door on the far side of the room. The wind moaned as it sought entrance to the house, failing miserably thanks to the new windows they’d put in just before finding out Mary was pregnant. A door banged and Mary flinched, jerked into full consciousness. There was no further sound, and gradually she relaxed, happy to believe Rags was on the prowl, probably after some small creature that had braved the cat flap and gained entrance to the kitchen. She heard a faint yowl, and smiled. There was nothing Rags loved more than to present them with whatever she’d chased during the night as a gift over breakfast. Hopefully this time she’d offer it to Alan, before Mary got downstairs.

Something creaked, closer this time, and Mary froze. The creaking came again, and something moved fitfully in the darkness. Mary gazed around the room, and saw the cradle move. Shocked, she watched as it rocked, ever so slightly, in the shadows. A faint creak came again each time it moved, and Mary got out of bed, making for the window, normally draught-free; perhaps Alan hadn’t shut it properly?

She reached the window and rattled the handle; nothing. The lock was securely fastened, and there was no trace of movement in the net curtains that hung there. Looking down, Mary could see the cherry tree’s branches whipping back and forth in the wind, but she could feel nothing of the night’s fury standing by the glass.

She tested the cradle, then. It creaked once more as she rattled the frame, the noise instantly recognisable. Perhaps a screw was loose somewhere? She resolved to get Alan to check everything carefully whilst he was absorbed in his restoration project – it had to be safe before the baby came.

A wave of dizziness swept over her, making her sway. Her left hand moved automatically to protect the baby; her right finding its way to her back, which was starting to complain at this nocturnal wandering. She crept back into bed, chilled, and curled up against Alan’s back, resting her icy feet against the warmth of his legs. True to form, he just pulled the duvet further up, making sure she was covered even in his sleep, and she smiled as his arm came up and rested on her hip, patting it. The baby kicked again, this time connecting with his back, and he huffed half-heartedly before settling back down. Sleep hurtled towards her, and she realised as she fell helplessly into its grip that somewhere a baby was crying.

~*~

The next few days were filled with the sound of Alan’s off-key humming as he first sanded, then painted the cradle a beautiful shade of very pale pink, and – at her insistence – carefully checked all the screws and fastenings he could see. Humming was a habit of his when happy, and Mary liked to hear it. He insisted the cradle was safe, nothing was loose now (if anything ever had been), but she still heard creaking in the night and pictured the cradle rocking – even though she couldn’t actually see it doing so. And sometimes there was a whining noise (it must be the cradle, she reasoned, it couldn’t be anything else), making a sound eerily reminiscent of a fussing infant. “It must be the wind,” he said, and she could hear the patience leeching out of his voice a little more every time he had to say it. Finally she gave in, and didn’t mention the creaking any more – but night after night, there it was, taunting her. She couldn’t sleep, and when she did manage to doze, her dreams were filled with the sound of a baby crying, and someone – a woman – wailing in the night.

Tuesday morning, and Mary woke to find Alan already dressed, ready to put a third and final coat of paint on the cradle. Fabric swatches were laid out on the dressing table for her to look at, and the window was open, letting in a chill wind.

“Morning, sleepy,” he said, smiling at her. His smile faded as he looked at her, and she spoke more sharply than she’d intended.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said. “At least…”

“What, Alan?” She sat up and rubbed her eyes, shivering as the draught reached her sweat-soaked skin.

“Another bad night?”

She groaned. “Is there any other kind, these days?” Heaving herself upright to rest her back against the pillows, she blinked and focussed on her husband’s worried face. “Do I look that bad?”

“You don’t look good, love, I have to say. You’re feeling okay, aren’t you? Apart from the sleep thing, I mean.”

Mary nodded. “I’m just tired, that’s all. I keep hearing that thing creaking at night –”

“It’s not the –”

“I know you say it’s not the cradle, but what the hell is it, otherwise?” She’d snapped before she could stop herself, and stopped before she could say something else, something hurtful.

Alan’s face fell as he replied. “I don’’t know. I’ve checked the cradle, the floorboards… nothing seems to creak. Maybe you’re just dreaming it?”

“Maybe I am,” she sighed. “I know I’m dreaming a baby crying, but either way the result’s the same. I’m shattered!”

“You stay there,” Alan answered. “I’ll bring you breakfast in bed.”

Mary spied the cradle behind her husband, and told herself it wasn’t a rocking motion spied from the corner of her eye that had attracted her attention. The cradle was still now, no sign of having moved. But she could have sworn… She smiled brightly at Alan, to show him just how okay she was, and threw the covers back. “No, I’ll come down. I’d rather eat at the table, with you.”

Bemused, Alan could only watch as she hurried past him and into the bathroom. The door clicked shut and he heard the lock turn. And his wife started to cry. Standing by the bathroom door, he leant against the wood, put his hand to the door and listened as she tried to stifle her sobs. Silently, he willed his wife to let him in, to talk about what was causing all this. Nothing, just the sound of Mary’s hitching sobs as she tried to get herself under control. Sighing, he gave up and went down to the kitchen to make them some breakfast. He could at least make sure she ate properly.

When Mary ventured into the kitchen her face glowed pink, scrubbed clean to hide her tears. She couldn’t hide her eyes, though; their watery stare showed him just how upset she was, and he tried once more to solve this.

“You’ve been crying,” he said.

Mary shook her head. “Not really. Bit weepy this morning, that’s all.”

“Why, love?”

“Just tired.” She peered at him over her cup, her expression vague. “Probably hormones.”

Ordinarily, the mention of hormones would be enough for him to leave the subject well alone. It wasn’t unusual for her to get weepy at times, and pregnancy had certainly played its part in that. On the other hand…

“Are you sure that’s all it is?”

Now she concentrated on the table cloth, tracing its pattern with a slightly shaky hand. She noticed its weakness and placed her hands on her lap, where the fingers proceeded to work at each other, intertwining and unlocking ceaselessly. “What else could it be?” she asked.

“The cradle, maybe?”

She flinched, and shook her head. “Don’t be silly.”

“I’ve seen the way you look at the cradle, love,” he said gently. “I know you don’t like it. I guess I hoped that would change when I’d finished.”

She sighed. “It’s not the cradle, as such,” she said. “But I hear the thing creaking, night after night, and I know you say it’s not the cradle but sometimes –”

“Sometimes what?”

“Sometimes I see the cradle rocking.”

Alan stared at her, shocked. “That’s impossible.”

“I know,” she wailed, “but it does!” She was crying hard now, and he didn’t know what to do. She hiccupped as she went on, “and… and… and that baby keeps crying! It’s driving me nuts, Alan!”

“That’s… crazy, love,” he whispered.

“I know it is. I know how it sounds.” She wiped her eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. “And yet it’s true.” She attempted a smile, then, and her next words broke Alan’s heart. “Maybe I am crazy.”

“No, love,” he said, and went to her. He leant down and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, held her tight. “You were right the first time, I think. Hormones. You’re just worried about the baby, and it’s coming out in dreams.”

She snuffled against his chest. “You think so?”

“Of course,” he said, willing himself to believe it. “We’ll ask the doc tomorrow, when we go for your check up, okay? I’m sure everything’s fine.”

Mary pulled herself out of his grasp, and smiled up at him. “Hope so.” She sniffed, and then grinned. “Can I smell bacon?”

Alan laughed. “You and your stomach. I cooked a full English; hang on.” He busied himself with the business of sorting out the meal, and tried to look happy. Mary needed him to be strong. He could do that, if it meant she relaxed. Her face lit up as he brought her meal across, and he sat back and watched her eat, aware that this woman was his world. And he wouldn’t, couldn’t, let anything happen to her.

~*~

Night time once more. Mary tossed and turned, and Alan watched – intent, this time, on making sure she wasn’t disturbed. The cradle was silent, unmoving, and he’d pulled the curtains tight shut against any possible draught. The house sat inert – joining him in his vigil.

Midnight. The floor creaked, and Alan turned towards the noise’s source – a narrow wedge of light gleamed under the door. Was someone in the hall? Noiselessly, he rose and crept towards the light, freezing as it was cut by two black bands. Someone was standing on the other side; he could hear the rasp of their breath in the dark. The bands shifted to the left, paused, and then moved back. Alan shivered, aware the temperature had plummeted – his stomach fluttering frantically as he fought to regain control of his will. His body locked itself in position just beside the door, and refused to let him try to turn the door handle. The floor creaked once more, and Alan saw the handle turn slightly. He couldn’t move. Mary moaned and stirred – and the light went out, leaving everything in shadow. For long seconds he watched, and waited, but whatever had been there had been banished by his wife’s movements. They were safe once more. Distantly, he heard a baby whimper, and a woman’s voice shushed the child as even that distant noise faded away.

Then silence.

“Alan?”

He cried out at the sound of Mary’s voice, and slumped against the door as he tried to catch his breath. “Jesus, you frightened the life out of me!”

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

There was panic in her voice, and Alan switched the light on, trying to smile but terrified that his expression must be nearer to a grimace. Mary was staring, owl-eyed, at him; her face so pale. “It’s all right, love. I’m sorry.” He crossed over to her, sat on the edge of the bed. “I thought I heard something, that’s all.”

“And did you?”

“No,” he lied. “Well, maybe the cat. I guess Rags needs to go on a diet after all.”

She didn’t smile, and he knew he wasn’t fooling her for a moment. He got up and turned his bedside lamp on, then turned out the overhead light and got into bed. “It’s okay, love, really. Go to sleep.”

She wormed her way under his arm, and soon fell asleep there. Alan lay wide-eyed in the dark, waiting for what might come next. He heard the usual sounds of a house relaxing, but nothing more. Time passed, and the light in the room went through gradations of shadow as the sun rose and tried to peek through the curtains. Still he lay, unmoving, unwilling to disturb his wife as she rested – he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was coming. Something wanted to announce itself, and their lives would never be the same.

~*~

The next few weeks were quiet, for the most part, and Mary almost began to believe that they’d imagined it all. The birth of their daughter wasn’t far away now, and life seemed to consist of hospital visits, shopping trips for last-minute ‘essentials’ such as armloads of nappies, babygros, creams… you name it, they bought it, eager to be fully prepared. In between those trips and spring-cleaning the house to make sure everything was done ahead of time, there hadn’t been much time for anything else to intrude. Now, all was finished, and her thoughts began to turn to what it would be like to greet her child. As they pulled into the hospital car park for a final scan, Mary felt the baby shift, not so much kicking as turning around entirely, forcing her to stretch out in the car seat, something that wasn’t exactly easy.

“You okay?’ Alan asked, alarmed.

“Yeah,” she answered, sighing. “She’s just having a kick around in there, I think.” The baby shifted again, and she winced. “Now I need to pee.”

Alan grinned, and pulled into a parking space. “Hang on, then. Won’t be a minute.”

He was true to his word, and five minutes later she let herself into the Ladies and locked herself in a cubicle. Pain lanced through her abdomen, making her cry out – then the baby lurched, and Mary passed out. When she came to, she was leaning against the cubicle wall, and her head throbbed. She put her hand to her forehead and it came away bloody. Had she fainted? Gingerly, she stood and looked into the bowl, fearful of what she might see. There was nothing there, and the pain had abated; perhaps all might yet be okay. She heard a murmur of voices outside, and realised Alan was probably out there, worried. How long had she been out? She tidied herself up, washed her hands, and wadded some tissues against the cut on her head. Then she let herself out into the corridor, where Alan stood, concern etched on his face.

“Mary!” He came to her, and looped an arm around her waist, coaxed her hand away from her forehead. “What happened?”

“I fainted, I think,” she whispered. “I feel a bit sick.”

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s sit down for a minute.” He led her to a chair, and busied himself cleaning the cut on her forehead, then got her a cup of water from the cooler in the corridor. She drank it, then nodded, a little bit of colour returning.

“Thanks, I’m okay now.”

“Are you sure?”

She nodded again. “I’m fine. I just got woozy for a sec, that’s all, and the next thing I knew I was waking up.”

“Well, at least we’re in the right place,” he said. “Come on, let’s get this scan done, and let them know what happened.”

~*~

The scan went without incident, and Mary found herself watching the movements of her baby in wonderment, Alan by her side. The child kicked and turned, and Mary saw her daughter was sucking her thumb. It still didn’t seem real, yet within a couple of weeks she’d be here, and they’d be a proper family. Things would never be the same.

The baby turned towards the probe again, and Mary froze as she opened her eyes, seeming to look straight at her. “Can she do that?” Mary asked.

“Do what?” the nurse asked, her attention on whatever it was the scan was telling her.

“Can she open her eyes?”

The nurse looked at the scan more closely, then, her brow furrowed. “I don’t think so, dear. Perhaps she was just fretting, eh?”

Mary watched as the baby stirred, then went back to the normal foetal position. Dimly, she could hear a baby crying again, and wondered how close they were to the maternity ward here. “Is everything okay with her?” she asked.

The nurse hummed and ha-ed for a few moments as she went over the results, then nodded. “Looks good to me.” She looked at Mary then and smiled. “You’ll be able to see for yourself soon.” She gestured to Mary’s clothes and said, “You can get dressed now, you’re all done. The doctor will have these in time for your next clinic appointment.”

Mary busied herself getting dressed, while Alan looked at the picture the nurse had given them of their baby. He had a beatific smile on his face, and Mary felt a pang at her misgivings. She was letting her imagination run away with her; the baby was fine. And it was all theirs.

~*~

Mary’s due date was close now; the baby was only days away. She woke, restless, on the Monday; and lay quiet for a while so that Alan could sleep. After a few minutes she couldn’t lie still anymore and got up quietly, careful not to disturb her husband. She wandered into the hall and prowled through the upstairs of the house. Nothing stirred. The cat lay comatose on the hall carpet, purring gently as it slept.

The wind sighed in the eaves, and Mary paused. Something rustled, and she looked behind her. Rags had sprung to her feet and was crouched, fur bristling, hissing at some unseen foe. There was nothing there. The hall was empty, and the only sound was the sighing of the wind, and the distant rumble of Alan’s snoring.

The wind grew louder, and Mary heard the creaking start in the bedroom. She whimpered, and told herself it was a draught – the double glazing was faulty, that was all. They’d have to call the builder back and get him to fix it. Alan shifted in his sleep, and moaned, and Mary took an involuntary step forward. She couldn’t leave him alone in there. Squeaaaaak… squeeeeak… the sound was louder now, more insistent. Mary became aware of a shushing sound, and stopped – she didn’t want to go into that room. She didn’t want to even be in the house, let alone in the bedroom, but Alan was in there, alone, and she couldn’t desert him.

The bedroom door was ajar; had she left it like that? She couldn’t remember. She pushed it further open, and stepped inside.

The bedroom was in shadow, save for a shaft of dim light that fell on the cradle from the window. Mary moaned as she saw that the window was different now… the modern glazing was gone, replaced by an old-fashioned sash window; paint peeling and rust patches clustered around the lock. The wind howled through a crack in the glass, and the cradle rocked faster.

Mary’s feet moved without conscious instruction, and as she edged closer she saw a dark shadow squirming in the depths of the cradle. The crying was louder now, and Mary saw a darker shadow open in the midst of where the phantom infant’s face must surely be. This was the source of the crying; the cradle bore some remnant of a child that had expired in its midst, the sadness palpable around it now, a cloud of misery that reached out to devour everything around it.

A shadow moved past Mary, and she flinched. She watched as it moved towards the cradle, spectral arms reaching out to pick up the dead child and clutch it to its phantom bosom. Mary saw skeletal fingers clutching at non-existent tresses as the baby wailed and wailed, desperate for comfort that would never come.

She screamed as she felt the first pains, and simultaneously saw the baby’s head turn towards her, arms reaching for her, her body responding even as madness closed in.

~*~

Alan woke, then, and found his wife unconscious on the floor. He leapt from the bed, and struggled to lift her, but finally he got her on the bed. Her breathing was shallow, her expression pallid, and he groaned as he saw the dark stain spreading on the sheets. “Oh Jesus, love,” he cried. “You’re bleeding. Oh God.” He went to pick up the phone, but her hand gripped his wrist, and he saw her eyes flutter open briefly.

“Don’t leave me,” she pleaded. “Please.” Her eyes closed again, and she screamed as another spasm ripped through her.

Alan quickly dialled the emergency services, and called for an ambulance. Details given, he slammed the phone down as she rallied once more, and went to his wife.

“Lean on me, love,” he said as he sat beside her on the bed. “Help’s coming. Just hold on.”

Mary smiled, then; her face so sad as she stroked his face. “She’s coming, Alan. Don’t let it get her.”

Mystified, Alan nodded, and held Mary’s hands as she breathed through another contraction. He heard a cry, cut off suddenly, and saw his daughter lying on the sheets even as she breathed her last.

Mary sobbed, and reached out to her baby, then screamed and started batting at the bed. “Get away! Get away from her!”

Alan heard the distant whoop of the ambulance’s siren, signifying it had found the lane to their cottage. He ran downstairs and unlocked the front door, leaving it ajar for them – they’d be with him in moments. Then he ran back up the stairs to his wife.

~*~

When he opened the door, he stopped in his tracks; unable to process what his eyes insisted he was seeing. Mary was crying, stroking their daughter’s lifeless body – and a shadow was reaching out, ushering what looked like a phantom infant towards her still form. He screamed as the shadow-child reached his daughter, and ran forward. The shadow drew back, clutching the long-dead infant to its chest, and vaguely he was aware of Mary shouting “The cradle! Get rid of the cradle!” He rushed over and lifted the cradle, grimacing as it fought in his grip, the spirit of whatever poor soul had lost her baby in the cradle trying to wrest it from him, to be returned to its place by the window. He wrenched it free, and – opening the window as wide as he could – hurled the cradle out into the night. There was a flash as it hit the ground, and he saw, just for a moment, a young woman clad only in a white shift, holding a screaming infant out to him, pleading for her child. “Save her,” she sobbed. “Save my baby!”

The ambulance reached them then, the blue light’s strobe casting the nightmarish scene in an impossible light. It drove over the cradle – the spirit screamed and was torn to shreds, fingers of mist dissipating in the wind even as the sound was fading, fading. Then the night was still, apart from the normal sounds of the wind, and of the ambulance parking and its crew getting out and coming to the door.

~*~

The child on the bed mewed and moved, mouth open in a maw of distress as its little arms and legs waved around. The ambulance crew took one look and, while one went to Mary and started to examine her, the other wrapped the infant in a blanket and gave it the once over. Satisfied it was a healthy birth, he offered the child to its father, who was crying in the hall.

“This one’s a fighter,” he said, smiling. “She wants her mother.” He looked back into the bedroom and then held the child tighter. “You can give her to her in a minute.”

Alan smiled. “Mary’s okay?”

“She’s fine, sir. A bit shocked, hysterical, really; but then she’s been through a lot.” The man smiled at him, then, his expression kindly. “They’ll both feel better when Mum can give baby a cuddle.”

Alan nodded, and took his daughter from the medic’s arms. He looked down at her face, pink and distressed, and took the waving fist in his own. The baby quieted, and he smiled at her as she watched him, curious now rather than afraid. “Come on, little one,” he whispered. “Let’s go and see Mummy.”

On the Grey Road

Alison Littlewood

The road was grey and empty and headed straight across the moor, and to Paul it came as a relief. The route that wound upward towards this place had seemed to be deliberately holding him back; and he wasn’t a tourist, wasn’t here for the view. Now the ground spread away on all sides, rust-coloured with bracken, divided by silver gashes of water and edged by the Highland peaks beyond. There was nothing else to be seen, no houses, no people, only the road cutting through it all, taking him onward to the place his mother had died.

I’ll come and see you, he’d said, after the divorce. But the divorce was finalised a year ago, his father moving south, his mother north, as if repelled like magnets with similar poles, and Paul still hadn’t got round to making the trip. The heart attack had been sudden, the funeral held where his grandparents lived, in Wiltshire. There was nothing here he wanted: only a property that was left to him, a house he had never seen – and a raging hollow inside, one formed as much from anger as sorrow. She had only been forty-three. She was looking forward to starting again.

After a time the road began to fall, dropping steeply, edging around a gorge where white water poured from the mountains. Ahead and below, blue water shone; it was Loch Leven, and Paul knew his journey was almost done.

~*~

The house was small and cramped and it was odd to see his mother’s things there. It was in a row of other small houses, all made of grey stone, thatched in what looked like blackened heather. Water hung in the air, too listless to fall as rain, and it was cold.

Inside the house wasn’t any warmer. Paul stood in the lounge and spun in a circle, taking in the small television, the nick-nacks, the photographs on a shelf. He went to pick one up, saw a picture of himself as a young boy, his mother smiling next to him. His dad was nowhere to be seen.

He looked into the kitchen, then a small room that had been turned into a study, papers strewn across the desk. The last room was his mother’s bedroom and Paul didn’t go in, just stood in the doorway. The bed wasn’t made and it looked as if she could have stepped out of it five minutes ago, got up and stretched, could have been pottering around elsewhere in the house. That made Paul’s back prickle. He shook the feeling off; he was being stupid. It was like when he was a young boy, and a friend had switched off the light and told Paul not to think of ghosts; it just wasn’t possible. He closed the door to his mother’s room and went to find a radio or something else with which to fill the house with noise.

~*~

Paul drew the curtains against the gathering dark and settled into the most comfortable chair in the room, a mug of coffee steaming on the table next to him. He realised he’d forgotten to bring a book and instead selected one from the shelf: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. He’d never liked Dickens, not really, though his mother had encouraged him to persevere; odd that she only seemed to have succeeded now she was gone.

There was a sound – a soft tap at the door – and Paul started. After a moment, he rose to answer. When he reached the hall he could see that the front door was already partway open and a short woman stood in the gap, her fine white hair blowing like candyfloss around her scalp. She didn’t smile but she pushed something towards him, and he caught its scent: apple pie.

“I thought ye might need it, hen,” she said. “I didnae know ye’d arrived a’ready.”

Paul blinked, wondered if he was supposed to have been expecting her. He glanced at the open door.

“Ah, lad, we’re friendly round these parts. We don’t lock our doors. Are ye no goin’ ter offer a neighbour a cup o’ tea?”

He apologised, stepped back and invited her inside.

The pie was still warm from the oven, generous and deep. They ate slices of it, the neighbour – Mrs Lennox – on the sofa, Paul on his mother’s chair.

“I was sorry about your mother,” she said. “She was nice. Friendly. A nice woman.”

Paul found himself unable to answer. He nodded, tried to swallow pastry that was clogging his throat.

“Perhaps she found what she wanted now though, eh?”

“Sorry?”

“Well, you know. The way she was chasin’ here and chasin’ there – wanting to know about all the ghosties an’ goblins.” said Mrs Lennox. “Enough to turn your hair white.” She tossed her head and smiled.

“She was what?” Paul frowned. His mother hadn’t been like that, had never shown a second’s interest in such things. He tried to recall if she’d ever mentioned anything on the telephone, but he couldn’t remember her even reading a scary novel, unless he counted A Christmas Carol.

“Ay, sweet, she went all o’er the place after it, she did. Especially around this time o’ day.”

“After it?”

“Well aye, the greyman, o’ course.” She said greyman as if it was all one word, raised her eyebrows as if thinking him a fool. For a moment, Paul wondered if he was; or if maybe she had wandered into the wrong house.

She let out a sharp laugh. “Now you’re thinking I’m losing my marbles, are ye not? I see it.” She set down her plate, leaned forward, tapped her finger to the side of her nose. “I’m not, laddie. I know what your mother said, not that it matters now, bless her soul. But she went up in the hills after it, she did. Supposed to walk the tops, they are, terrifying anyone who goes there.” She paused. “She thought it were himsel’ that was taking the others.”

“Others?”

“Of course: the others.” She looked suddenly old. “The others. The ones who died like she did.”

Paul stared at her, shook his head. Where had she got such strange ideas? But then, she’d probably done the same thing to his mother, come round here spinning wild tales, and his mother would have been too polite to laugh at her. Now Mrs Lennox didn’t look at him, just took small sips of her tea, staring into the fireplace. He wondered what she was seeing; certainly not the same thing he did.

As soon as he could he showed her out, muttering pleasantries, though he was still thinking about what she’d told him. No: if his mother had been chasing some ghost, it was because she’d become interested in the area, its colour, its stories; nothing more. She simply hadn’t been that credulous.

She thought it were himsel’ that was taking the others.

Paul shook his head, forced a smile. He thought of the way the woman had opened the door; made sure he locked it before turning in for the night.

~*~

Paul tried to sleep on the sofa, lay awake listening to the rain rapping on the windows. Soon he would get the place listed with an estate agent, a clean white sign outside, and his mother’s things would be gone: a new beginning, for someone. He got up once during the night and pulled aside the curtains. Outside he saw nothing but the outline of more houses, their windows dark. He looked up and beyond them. He knew the hills were there, but he couldn’t see them; there was only an area that was blacker than the rest. He squinted. Had his mother really imagined some creature up there? It must be a foolish thing to haunt such a place. He shuddered, pulled the curtains closed, and tried to sleep once more.

~*~

The study was the first thing. Paul knew the ornaments would have to go, the books; but he couldn’t think of moving them, not yet. His visitor of the night before had piqued his curiosity. Was there really any truth in it? He went in, sat down at the desk. Although the house had been closed up this room felt bright, airy; light streamed in, streaking the walls.

There was a picture on the desk. It was of a face carved in wood, peering from between oak leaves, mouth open, tongue sticking out. He grimaced, put the image aside. Beneath it was a book on the mysterious places of Scotland; below that, printouts, something about brownies, selkies, the sidhe, then Am Fear Liath Mòr, the greyman. He rested his hand on it a moment, closed his eyes. Hadn’t he known his mother at all? He scanned the page about the greyman, read something about a supernatural presence haunting the peak of Ben MacDhui – the sound of spectral footsteps that would follow hikers through the mist, the terror it inspired in all who heard it. He frowned, turned the page to see a map; the mountain it spoke of was miles and miles away. At the bottom, written in his mother’s hand, were the words: Another type? Sound only. If seen, seen only once. And then, a single word, underlined: cold.

Paul frowned and pushed the papers away. What on Earth had she been doing, writing a book or something? She’d never said anything to him, never mentioned this. He leafed through the rest, glancing at notes, local legends listed and tagged. Surely that must be what she had been doing; it couldn’t be anything else. Then, at the bottom, he found in her writing: The minister. He knows the grey.

Paul looked up, stared at the wall. Photographs had been pinned to it: an island in the loch, a hilltop wreathed in mist, a small church. His mother, smiling into the camera. She was wearing walking shoes and a padded jacket, and she looked happy. She stood on a slope covered with springy heather, some place Paul had never been and didn’t know. He glanced out of the window. Perhaps he should get outside, go and see the things she had seen; it was one way to bring her back, if only for a while.

He frowned. Was that why he had chosen that book to read, last night – to bring his mother back? But anyway, a walk would do him good, and he could call by the church on the way. Without thinking, he took the sheet of paper, folded it and slipped it into his pocket before he went out.

~*~

The church was larger than Paul had expected, made of dour grey stone and rising tall into a pointed tower. From this angle, close to the front door, it seemed bigger than the mountains beyond. He was still peering upward, seeing catches of blue sky through breaks in the cloud, when someone called a greeting; a moment later Paul heard the sound of footsteps. He turned to see a minister carrying a trug full of weeds, the man’s face reddened with exertion, only a dog collar belying his profession.

“I’m Mrs Heyward’s son,” Paul said. He found it odd to identify himself by someone who was gone, but the minister showed no sign of it being strange; he merely nodded, held up his hands to show they were too dirty to shake, and led the way inside.

“Tea,” he said later, while they sat on a pew and sipped. “Drink of the lord, if I may say so.”

Paul smiled, cradling a mug in his hands. He’d never really liked tea, had only accepted because doing so would make it easier to talk; now he didn’t know what to say.

“So what brings you here, son? Your mother was a good woman, but she didn’t attend, not really.”

Paul shook his head, set down his mug on the stone floor, reached into his pocket. “I found this,” he said. “I wondered if you knew what it meant.” He spread the map, saw the minister’s puzzled look and pointed to the words written beneath.

“I know the grey? My parishioners aren’t that bad.”

“I don’t think she meant –”

“Ah, don’t worry yoursel’. I know what she meant.” The minister smiled. “She was interested in the local stories. Come on, I’ll show you.”

He got up, led the way past the altar and through a heavy curtain. Behind it was a small anteroom, a sink and kettle at one side, a couple of chairs, a clothes rail with robes hanging from it. “Backstage,” he said. “Now, your mother heard there was a wee strange carving in the church. So I showed her this.” He walked over to what looked like a blank section of wall. Paul went closer, saw lines scratched into it; they weren’t regular, not professionally carved but scratched into the surface.

When the sun is behind ye

And the mist is afore ye

Then shall the spectre come

And be seen in its glory...

“What does that mean?” Paul asked.

“What does it mean? I don’t know, lad. But your mother was interested, right enough. Said she thought she knew what it meant, but she never told me and I didnae ask. Didn’t really seem like church business, you know, even though it’s been carved on our wall.”

“Do you know who did it?”

“I don’t, lad. It’s been there as far as I can remember, and as far as my predecessor could remember. For so long, in fact, I hardly see it anymore. It was only your mother coming that made me even think of it. Now, how about finishing that cup o’ tea?”

“Do you mind if I copy it down?”

The minister shrugged. “Help yoursel’. Your mother did.” Then he clicked his fingers. “No, she didn’t; she had the best idea, son. She just took a picture.”

~*~

The camera was in a drawer in his mother’s desk, and Paul turned it in his hands, finding the ‘on’ switch. The lens extended with a whirr and he turned it over, reviewed the pictures his mother had taken before she died. It was difficult to make out the details on the small screen but there was a grey wall with lines scratched on it; the inscription in the church, as the minister had said. After that there were mainly landscapes, taken up in the hills somewhere as the day was fading, the sun bleeding across the sky. There was the loch too, sombrely lit in the shades of dusk, a slow mist creeping across the water.

Paul frowned. When the sun is behind ye, he thought.

When the sun is behind ye

And the mist is afore ye.

~*~

What had Mrs Lennox said?

She were chasin’ here and chasin’ there... Especially around this time o’ day.

He looked out of the window into bright daylight. He could follow her, but not yet; he could wait for the sun to pass away – to fall behind him – and then perhaps the mist would come, rising from the loch as in the picture. The sun behind him and the mist before him. Perhaps, then, he could feel closer to her, could look at things as she had looked at them.

He closed his eyes. What the hell was he thinking? It was too late to try to feel closer to his mother. He was too late; she wasn’t here any longer, had gone and wasn’t coming back. It wasn’t as if she’d return to him. There were no ghosts, no goblins. It was as if the neighbour’s talk had put ideas in his head. If he still felt his mother’s presence in these rooms it was only because he hadn’t banished it, done what he was supposed to do and prepared it for sale. If there were ghosts they were only in his thoughts, of his own making.

He rose and went to find something to eat, to find practical things to do. Before he did, he saw the copy of Dickens sitting on the table; he picked it up and pushed it back onto the shelf.

~*~

That evening, Paul went for a walk. He told himself he hadn’t chosen the timing; he had merely become tired of packing away abandoned things, that it was coincidence that the sun was just sinking behind the peaks. He told himself he hadn’t chosen the direction either, but he meandered down through the village and towards the loch, which glistened the no-colour of the time between day and night.

The sun was beginning to redden, still haloing the mountains in bursts of glare. The air was tepid and midges hung in tenuous globes above the path. Paul swatted at them as he walked, his scalp beginning to itch; he wasn’t sure whether the bites were imagined or real.

He walked towards the water’s edge and then skirted it. He stopped and listened, could hear nothing; then realised there were sounds, the distant hum of a motor, the intermittent call of a bird. Nothing else except a faint rushing that may have been his own blood, might have been nothing at all.

He looked across the loch, which was filling with gold that spread outwards from its centre. He stared at it, trying to decide if a light mist was gathering on the water; he couldn’t tell. He tried to decide if he could feel a presence there, anything at all, but the air was empty, and he knew with absolute certainty that he was alone.

~*~

In the house, it was better. The books were still there, his mother’s pictures. He had packed away the ornaments, leaving the rest; probably better, he had decided, if the house still looked lived in when prospective buyers came to view.

It didn’t altogether come as a surprise when there was a sharp knock at the door.

The caller was Mrs Lennox, her cheeks pink with the night’s chill, this time bearing a tray of flapjacks. “I got them at the store,” she said. “Ah’m not that much of a cook.” And she winked at him like an old friend.

Paul went to make tea, to bring plates. When he came back she was standing at the bookshelf, her back to him, reading the spines. He set down the cups, almost dropping them; on the table was a single volume he recognised. It was A Tale of Two Cities.

“Did you take that down?”

Mrs Lennox turned. “Oh – well, aye, I suppose I must have. Sorry, dear, I didnae mean to touch anything. It was her favourite, you know.”

“No – I’m sorry. It made me jump, I suppose.” Paul paused. “I didn’t know it was her favourite. I knew she liked Dickens, but –”

“Aye, well. I ne’er could stand him, mesel.”

He gave a startled laugh. “Me neither.”

“You know, I really was very sorry. When I heard they’d found her, I – well, I was upset. She was nice, like I said.”

“Thank you.”

“And you’re a nice lad. Just as I’d have imagined.”

Paul waved the compliment away, but then something she’d said registered, and he blurted: “When they found her?” He couldn’t seem to take in those words. When it happened, his grandparents had organised everything; now he realised he didn’t really know the details, only that she had died here, miles away from him. Now he wondered. Who found her? What exactly had happened? He knew she had suffered a heart attack, had died almost at once: but was that true, or something they’d only said to make him feel better?

“What is it, hen?”

“I just – I don’t really know how it happened,” he said. “I don’t suppose you could tell me, Mrs Lennox?”

“Well, hen, I don’t know much mesel’. I only know they found her out by the roadside.”

“The roadside? She wasn’t here, at home?” New images flooded into Paul’s mind: unpleasant images.

“No, poppet. She was on the road up on the moor. Her car was in a lay-by, not so far off. She was just lying there, so I heard. She was – sorry, hen. Someone drove past and saw her – she was already gone when they found her. It would have been quick, so they said.”

Paul didn’t answer. He stared down at the book on the table, idly turned the cover, flicked through the pages without seeing them.

“Sorry, hen,” she said. “It was a wee bit strange though, wasn’t it? That she had such an interest in the others who’d gone before, and then – a tragedy, dear. A tragedy.”

“The others,” Paul repeated. And he remembered: she’d said something about that on her last visit, hadn’t she? What had she meant, exactly?

She thought it were himsel’ that was taking the others.

“Aye – sorry, lad, I thought you knew. She’d been asking around about some folk who died up on that same stretch of road: heart attacks, like her. One o’ them was a tourist. Another was years back – old Mr McTavish. He was old, though; it was only natural. I told her it didn’t mean anything, but she seemed so interested.”

Paul stared down at the book. He barely trusted himself to speak, but he asked the question anyway. All he could see before him now was the grey road carrying him across the moor; he could have looked at the very spot where his mother had been found. Maybe it was the same place he’d felt such relief, where he stopped thinking the bends in the road were holding him back, and he crossed over into the place he was trying to reach at last.

~*~

The next morning Paul packed up his things, locked the door, got into the car and left. He had done enough; either his mother’s house would sell or it wouldn’t. He found, today, he didn’t much care either way. It was hers, and he didn’t want to empty it. The only thing he took away with him was the book – A Tale of Two Cities. It was his mother’s, and he would read it, if only because she wanted him to.

He didn’t see anyone as he left the village. He was already up on the moorland road in his mind; no, beyond the road, where it stopped heading across the top of the moor and started to wind downwards on the other side. The place his mother had died.

~*~

The morning was clear and bright as Paul passed over the moorland, the sun sparking off pools of still water. It felt almost like clarity, a new beginning. It was a good place to say goodbye to her, and then he would put it behind him and he would leave; he would not come back.

Mrs Lennox had described the place and as the road turned downward, the land falling away to one side, he saw the lay-by. It was broader than he had expected, smoothly paved. He signalled and pulled in, sat there for a moment leaning over the wheel and looking out across the valley. The sun hadn’t yet burned away the fog and it lay swathed in the dips, whitely shining.

Paul’s legs felt heavy as he stepped out of the car. She said it had happened a little further down the road, and he walked along it, but after a short distance his steps faltered. He didn’t know if it was here or further; there was no way of telling. Perhaps, after all, it didn’t really matter. He mouthed his goodbye into the cold air. Maybe she heard him, maybe she didn’t. He turned to go, looking out over that drop once more.

The fog was there, a white stillness; it was simple, beautiful. He stepped closer to the edge. He could feel the sun on his back, warming him. Soon the fog would be gone and there would be nothing to see but a bright, clear day. Then his eyes narrowed. There was a shape in what should have been shapeless: a grey outline in the mist below.

His breath froze in his throat.

When the sun is behind ye.

He shook his head, blinked. There was a shape. It was tall, much taller than a man, and spindly; its legs were those of a giant. And about its head - Paul caught his breath: its head was crowned in a halo that shone in rainbow colours.

When the sun is behind ye

And the mist is afore ye

Then shall the spectre come

And be seen in its glory.

Oh God, he thought, and then he let out a spurt of a laugh: oh, Mother. He knew now what it was, had heard of this before: it was nothing but his own shadow cast by the sun behind him onto the mist below. Wasn’t it called a brocken bow? Or a brocken spectre. There was no ghost, no one there, nothing but a trick of the light. Was that all the poem had been about, that had sent his mother chasing about the hilltops? Perhaps he shouldn’t be laughing, but then perhaps his mother had known, too; of course, she must have. This must have been what she expected to find, when –

The shadow changed. Paul stared down at it. He was wrong, of course he was, but when he blinked it was still there, undeniable: not one shape now outlined against the fog but two.

The air was cold in his lungs. It was choking him, making him want to cough, but he daren’t; he swallowed it back.

There were two brocken spectres in the fog, one a little behind the other, as if standing just at his shoulder. Paul knew there could be no one behind him; there had been no other walkers, no other cars, but of course it was just another trick of the light; the sun’s rays had been split by some crag, were projecting a double image of himself onto the fog, nothing more.

He didn’t want to move, it made him feel vulnerable, but he forced himself to do it anyway: he raised his arms into the air.

Below him, far away, a grey figure lifted its arms. One figure. The other stood motionless. The chill was defeating the warmth of the sun now, trickling down Paul’s back like water. It was cold: so very cold. He had known. He had known it wasn’t a trick of the light, some projected image. He had known because he could feel it at his back, a presence so much stronger than the lingering remnants of life gone from the little house in the village. It was standing behind him. It was waiting.

The grey, he thought. Is that what it was? Is that what she was, now?

He couldn’t breathe.

She had known: of course she had known. She had put it in her notes, had listed and catalogued it. Then she had got into her car and driven out here.

If seen, seen only once, she had written. And then, one word: cold.

He couldn’t take his eyes from the shades below him. Soon the sun would rise higher and the day would come. The fog would pass away and the spell would break; he would be able to breathe again, could leave this place, drive away and never look back. But he could feel the presence behind him. He could prove to himself that it was real, if he would only turn and look.

If seen, seen only once.

He kept on staring down into the mist. He was unable to move. Below him and far away, the grey figure looked back.

Not a Cat Person

Adrian Tchaikovsky

Stewart Tyrrel had never spared a thought for where his colleagues lived. For him, they existed in virtual space, book-space, there alongside the classic authors of antiquity, the writers of commentaries, the publishers of papers in respected journals. There was no need for any of these people to have a physical presence in the world. To be tied to one home, to the gross physicality of a single human body, diminished them somehow.

Certainly George Bechter’s house avoided any latent expectations. This? This great pile of a Victorian, enough rooms to make a Bed and Breakfast out of it, three storeys of mouldering red brick. And yet George’s writing had always been so insightful, so carefully detailed and meticulous. Finding this sprawling domain as his home was like visiting the author of some fabulous diet to find them twenty stone and cramming cakes.

Nor had he envisaged the Widow Bechter, clad in respectable black, waiting on the curb for him. George had never spoken of family.

“Mrs Bechter.”

“Dr Tyrrel, thank you for coming.” She hovered at the gate as though reluctant to even set foot on the property.

“It’s the least I could do. I counted your husband as the most incisive mind in our field. He was a brilliant man, Mrs Bechter.”

You didn’t have to live with him, was the look in her eyes. “I’m sorry to ask for help like this, but his book... his publishers are threatening to reclaim the advance from the estate, and... there was never much money to start with. He said it was almost finished. He said that only a week before he...”

“It will be an honour to bring his final work into print,” Stewart confirmed. As she was evidently not going to, he strode down the path to the front door, which forced the Widow Bechter to follow in his footsteps. Once that Rubicon had been crossed she apparently felt confident enough to turn the key and usher him in.

Bechter’s house smelled faintly of rot – not of human death but of ancient things being given over slowly to the new life of mould and damp. The place was still cluttered with his possessions, perhaps just as it had been when the man’s heart had finally given out.

“It’s all in his study,” Mrs Bechter explained, as if he would know where that was, and she loitered in the hall for some time before taking him up the stairs to show him.

Looking on that, where the great man had worked, Stewart nodded grimly. “I see why you said I could stay over here.” He had been hoping just to box up Bechter’s research materials and get them home, but every flat surface was spread with papers and open books, annotated and marked with scraps and post-its and red pen. Every surface was heaped with them: desk, table, shelves, even the top of an old drained fish tank that now held nothing but dust and sand. Anatomised in every part of the room was an unfolding project in medias res. Bechter had indeed been in the midst of his work when he died, and what Stewart saw didn’t look like something a week from completion. The chance to get my name on it, beneath his, he reminded himself; and, besides, he would get his share of the advance monies. The deal that Mrs Bechter had put to him was surprisingly generous.

“Have you...?” He gestured towards the papers.

She shook her head quickly. “I was going to, Dr Tyrrel, but... I can’t stand to stay in the house now...”

“Now he’s gone.”

“It’s more like he’s not gone. I’m sorry but... My husband was a difficult man to get on with, towards the end. He was very wrapped up in his work. Very committed to it. We didn’t speak much, not much at all. It was hard to be in the house with him. It was as if I was sharing him, as if he was married to someone else. I don’t know what you or his colleagues got from him, but at the end it was all I could do to force a few words. I think that the only thing he cared about at all was his work and his beloved Felix.” She said the name with utter disdain, and Stewart recalled the flap he had seen in the front door, and marked Mrs Bechter down as ‘not a cat person.’

“Well, I’ll get right down to work, Mrs Bechter. It’ll take me a little while to catch up with where George was, and after that I should hopefully be able to give you an idea of how much longer this will take. Or did you want me to liaise with the publishers direct?” He was already seeing his name on the cover. After George’s, of course, but there was plainly enough work left to do that he could snag a co-authorship, and this would be George Bechter’s final, posthumous work, a grand opportunity for Stewart to step into his shoes as the leading man on Pythagorean philosophy.

“There’s some tins and things in the cupboards, still,” she prompted. “Tea, milk. I made sure...”

“I saw a Tescos down the road,” Stewart confirmed. “I’ll be fine.” He could see she was desperate to go. “I’ll keep in touch.”

~*~

He had intended to spend his first day in the Bechter place just sorting himself out, but the lure of the work, all those books opening their secrets to him, ensured that he was at the dead man’s desk within an hour of the widow’s leaving, reading through the draft chapters on the man’s computer, locating the reference works that Bechter quoted. Classical Theories of Metempsychosis, was the title. There had been few more brilliant scholars of ancient Greek philosophy than George Bechter. In his declining years, Stewart had seen his thoughts darken with each season, reflected in the shifting focus of his papers and talks. Everything had been about ancient death, in the end, until this last book had outlived him.

Or perhaps not death. Stewart read over Bechter’s notes on the Pythagoreans, who all accounts claimed were strong proponents of metempsychosis: the flight of a soul on death, reincarnation, transmigration into other bodies, animals, trees; a web of constantly turning life that knew no true extinction. Sitting there, knowing that the man who had made those notes had indeed passed on along that wheel, or perhaps just into oblivion, Stewart felt an odd sense of his own mortality. You too shall pass, was written between those cramped lines of handwriting, or in the double spacing of the 12 point Courier on the screen. Only through this shall we be remembered at all.

Unless the Pythagoreans had the right of it, anyway, Stewart considered wryly. And where was old Pythagoras now, in that case?

The lights flickered just with that thought, which gave him a bit of a turn. He had not noted the march of the hours but dusk was already well-established beyond the windows. He drew the curtains, and spared a thought for the decades-old wiring in that dilapidated house. Bet George didn’t spring for an electrician often. He should at least find out where the fuse box was, now, in case something failed after dark.

He stepped away from the desk, then, and did a tour of the house, room after room of peeling green wallpaper and nicotine-yellowed paint. Fully half the house was given over to cobwebs and dust, surplus to requirements for decades. The Bechter children had presumably grown up and moved out long before, and it didn’t look as though any of them had cared enough to come back and assist their mother with the estate.

He found the fuse box at last in a well-concealed cupboard under the stairs, checked to see how it worked and how he could reset things if need be. The sight of it, a rather more modern contrivance than he had been fearing, improved his spirits.

Then something moved, a furtive scurrying shuffle, and he went quite still.

Deep down at the back, where all pretence at being a cupboard left off, and it was just “under the stairs” – an irregular, part-walled space leading only to darkness – the light from outside glinted back at him. For a moment Stewart stared, assuming that he had imagined it, that he was making patterns where there was nothing, but no: something was huddled back there, staring out at him as he stood silhouetted in the doorway.

It took a moment for the name to come to him. “Felix,” he recalled. Opening the cupboard door as wide as it would go, the animal was still just a little lump of fuzzy darkness barely separate from the shadow around it.

“Here, Felix.” Stewart held out a hand and made mouse-noises between his lips, but he could not reach in far enough, and Felix just huddled further away, the eyes glinting suspicion back at him. Small enough to be a kitten, Stewart decided. And terrified. But hungry, surely. Unless there are mice…

I’ll leave the door open, anyway. Stewart had always lived in houses with cats. The thought of Felix gracing the study while he worked was a pleasant one. Good to have some company. His general uncharitable thoughts about Mrs Bechter the non-cat-person hardened. I bet she didn’t waste much time looking for you, poor bugger.

He poked around for some cat food, found none, and eventually got down to Tescos just before it shut. Before turning in, he put out a bowl of meaty chunks for Felix, imagining that little patch of shade detaching itself from the dark of the cupboard to steal silently up and eat its fill while he slept.

~*~

The next morning began in triumph. He had been an hour at Bechter’s desk, despairing over how unfinished everything looked, when he discovered a hitherto overlooked folder on the man’s desktop that turned out to contain a far more polished version of the book, with various sections intended for review all flagged up helpfully in red. Suddenly what had looked to be a month’s work was decidedly closer to the week that the Widow Bechter had sold him on.

The cat food had not been touched, he saw. Maybe it is mice he eats, then. Or maybe he just doesn’t trust me yet. Certainly when he poked his head into the cupboard there was no sign of a feline occupant.

He rang Mrs Bechter on the strength of his discovery, and confirmed that things were going well. She sounded somewhat smugly pleased, to his ear, and so he felt he had to put in, “I’ve seen Felix, by the way.”

There was a startled silence on the other end of the line, and then she said, “You mean the photos in the kitchen?”

He had been meandering that way to make tea, but now he quickened his pace, because he hadn’t paid much notice to the décor the previous night. “No, I mean Felix, Mrs Bechter,” he said sternly.

“Oh…” She sounded just as guilty as he had hoped. “Oh dear, I hadn’t thought… I hope…”

“Oh I’ll be fine,” he assured her, with heavy I-am-a-cat-person subtext. “He and I’ll get along swimmingly.”

“She,” Mrs Bechter corrected him.

“Odd name for a she,” he noted. The kettle was on and he turned to look at the framed photographs. No happy couple shot for the Bechters, it seemed, but separate his and hers. There was George, surely taken only a year or so before he died, a hollow-cheeked old man with a pipe in one hand, glasses so thick you could have bottomed bottles with the lenses. The shot had him leaning on the aquarium that Stewart had seen upstairs, looking thoughtfully off into the distance. Not a happy man, but not an unhappy one either. Resigned, maybe.

“He named her for the saint,” Mrs Bechter said, with all that disapproval back in her voice, as though she was not a saint person either. “Are you sure…”

“Oh, I’ll be fine.” The other picture was Mrs Bechter, probably taken about the same time. The cat that she held was grey and baggy and stared out of the frame as though it was pleading with the photographer for help. To her credit, Mrs Bechter had obviously got over her cat-phobia for the split second required to get a decent shot, but Stewart could only imagine the story behind that. Had George been begging with the woman to just pretend to be friends with his poor abused cat for the sake of the photo? Had she and the cat agreed a brief mutual détente only to humour him?

~*~

Working late that night, he heard the creak of the door, and from the corner of his eye he glimpsed the low, smoothly-running shape bolt into the room and lose itself – herself – amidst Bechter’s clutter. Reliving the lives of the philosophers, men from an age when reason and science, religion and magic all went hand in hand, Stewart felt that he could imagine a great sense of approval from somewhere in the room as Felix watched him work. When he left the desk, to answer the call of nature or to make some tea, he imagined a spark of frustration, claws digging in to the carpet in a minute tantrum. Like some tomb guardian of old Egypt, Felix was overseeing the completion of her master’s work.

He was at the computer until late, past midnight, because the book really was coming together. Each section that Bechter had flagged up had references, facts to check, papers noted for reading, but everything was around him somewhere. Navigating through the stacks of journals and photocopies and precarious towers of books, decoding the dead man’s haphazard system, the process was like some sort of vision quest, or an initiation rite into some great classical mystery. From time to time he caught glimpses of Felix, or thought he did – just a dark shape slinking by secret ways about the room, or the glint of those big eyes, cautious of him, and yet almost proprietary. Once, his hand brushed fur, a startled moment before the animal was gone in a flurry. And yet something was nagging him, and nagged at him as he went to sleep in Bechter’s own bed, with the sense of Felix somewhere in the room, crouching and settling and always keeping watch.

He awoke with the suspicion full-formed, and spent two valuable working hours searching the house – not for a cat, but for its effects. The flap was there, certainly, but he had already noted that the Bechters were out of cat food, and there was no litter tray, no cat toys, none of the paraphernalia that the cat owner should accumulate. Yes, cats came and went, and probably the animal was outside even now, but a suspicion was growing in him, and he called up Mrs Bechter again.

He recalled that awkward conversation of the other day, the change in her tone when he had mentioned seeing Felix. He had pegged her as a woman who disliked cats, but now he thought back on her words, the echo of them in his head suggested something other.

“Mrs Bechter.” It was after he had reported his good progress, reassured her that he was sound, sane, sensible and progressing. “Felix… predeceased your husband, didn’t she?”

“By only a few days,” came her whisper on the other end of the line. “I think that was the last straw for George. He did love her, doted on her.” And there was the bitterness he was ready for, because plainly she felt he had loved his pet more than he had loved his wife.

“When I said that I…” He wasn’t sure how to say it. “You said you couldn’t stay in the house. Was it…?”

“Yes.” He had to strain to hear her voice. “I kept seeing… I don’t believe in ghosts, Dr Tyrrel, really I don’t. And I think I could have coped with… if it had been George’s. But Felix…”

And upstairs in the study sat that near-complete examination of metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls, that belief that the soul of a man might inhabit a beast, or a beast a man, and so there was no difference, in the end, in the calibre and quality of those ineffable things. The outward body was not the mark of the inward being.

Why should a man’s ghost not appear in the shape of a cat, then, especially if his cat was so dear to him? Or perhaps cat and man are one and the same… Standing there in the broad daylight it was just a humorous conceit, a foolish piece of academic play. It was some other cat. I never did get a good look. Some local mog got in through the cat flap. In the bright light of morning, looking at those photos in the kitchen, he almost convinced himself. He couldn’t even say that the little skittering patch of furry shadow that he had glimpsed looked much like the sagging, desperate feline clutched in Mrs Bechter’s arms.

But, just as with the lives of mortal men, so the hours of daylight must fail, and transmigrate into the moonlit dark. Sitting there past evening, the tweaking of aging wiring making the light bulbs dance and flicker, Stewart heard the door creak. Craning round in his chair he saw that swift-footed shape rushing belly to the ground, a streak of shadow finding a hiding place amongst George Bechter’s reference works. The hour had stripped Stewart of his scepticism. He knew, without being able to account for the knowledge, that Felix had come to visit.

Felix was larger, too. He never saw her clearly, but the sense of a presence in the room had grown beyond the kitten into the heavy-bodied cat of the photo, at the very least. Perhaps cats, being the centres of their own worlds, had no sense of their own smallness, compared to the apes that fed and sheltered them.

“Don’t worry, old girl. I’m still hard at it,” he murmured, and that same feeling of approval radiated back. He tried to tell himself, I’m going mad, talking to the ghost of a cat, but it seemed wholly appropriate, somehow. The supernatural had inveigled its way into his mind in feline form, and he was a cat person. Felix was not a disruptive companion, a ghost without chains or moans or throwing things about the room. What spirit, after all, would be quieter and more delicate than a cat’s?

So the night went on, and the next two, as Stewart chased down the loose ends of George Bechter’s last book, and Felix grew bolder. Her presence was often at his elbow, and sometimes he would let one hand drift down to stroke that soft, luxuriant fur, momentarily feeling the hard body beneath as it rose to his touch. Never a purr, though, or any feline sound, only the soft patter of feet. Felix was a polite, patient spectre.

But growing, certainly, and in those mad hours after sunset he conceived the idea that the size of the unseen, ghostly – possibly imaginary – cat grew with the progress of his work, that the spirit fed off the task that its master had left unfinished. By his fourth night in the property, hunched over the keyboard and working on the bibliography, the patch of quiet beside him had the presence and bulk of a tiger. Perhaps all cats were tigers, in their own minds.

When he left the work, he felt those wide eyes track him across the room, a moment’s doubt of his dedication to the project, but Felix knew his routines by now. Felix trusted him to get the job done.

He found that he was stringing the work out. During the day, when both Felix and his belief in Felix waned, he did little. He sat at the keyboard listlessly, feeling oddly alone and bereft. Without his spectral taskmaster he found it difficult to motivate himself. Instead, he mooched around the house, picking over the grave goods of the rooms he had not much been into, reading Bechter’s books, going through his cupboards and drawers.

That was where he found the collar. On seeing it, that red plastic loop with its circular metal tag, he felt a surge of triumph. Here, at last, was some relic of Felix that Mrs Bechter had not excised. Perhaps he would even keep it as a souvenir of a peculiar but not unpleasant week. At dinner parties maybe he would trot out the anecdote, and brandish this forlorn little collar as proof that yes, there had been a cat named...

The stamped name on the tag was “Mr Buffles.”

Stewart frowned at it and then shrugged inwardly. Obviously he had gone back further into the Bechter family history than he had realised. The relic he had excavated had come from a former age, when cats were given decidedly dafter names.

Towards evening, feeling the pull of the work just begin to get its hooks into him, he called Mrs Bechter again.

“I found some things belonging to your previous cat, by the way.” He had reported on the book, but he still felt fiercely partisan in the case of Felix vs Mrs Bechter, and now he had discovered that she had presumably been persecuting whole generations of unfortunate cats, of which poor deceased Felix was only the capstone.

Mrs Bechter sounded surprised. “We never had a previous cat, Dr Tyrell. What do you mean?”

“Well who’s Mr Buffles then?” he asked her, in the manner of the great detective unveiling the murderer.

“Mr Buffles is my cat,” came the voice over the phone, honestly bewildered. “You must have seen him in the photo, in the kitchen.”

Stewart was in the kitchen right then, and he locked eyes with the despairing-looking feline in the photo. That animal gaze had an urgency to it, a message for him.

“But if you’ve found anything belonging to Mr Buffles I’ll come and pick it up tomorrow, or the next day,” Mrs Bechter was saying. “Yes I will, Mr Buffles.” And there in the background, distant as the echo from a tomb, a faint mew.

“But I thought... you didn’t like cats...”

“I love cats, Dr Tyrrel. I’m a cat person. George, though, he never did get on with Mr Buffles –”

He moved the phone away from his ear, staring, hearing something move, soft-footed and yet so large, in the house above him. But she said it was Felix in the photo, he told himself. There was only one cat, though, and it was not sharing a frame with George Bechter. Instead, he was the academic alone with his pipe, one proprietary, fond hand upon the fish tank. The fish tank?

It was in the study, dry and drained, and he had assumed that the fish had been taken by Mrs Bechter, or flushed down the loo for all he knew, and thought no more about it. Looking at it now, partially occluded in the corner of the photo, it did not look much like an aquarium. There was no sense of water, no refraction of light over the sandy and stones that lined the bottom, but there was something there, some patch of darkness...

He dashed upstairs and bolted into the study, looking at the tank anew. No backing paper of water weeds, no pump, just a glass box lined with dirt, with a heater.

Not an aquarium: a vivarium.

In the room, Felix moved restlessly. It was past time for Stewart to get to work. Whatever shared the study with him – the thing that monopolised the shadows, half-glimpsed between stacks as it stirred from its slumber – would not fit in that tank, not any more. He had fed it too well, with his industry and his attention and his belief.

He sat at the desk, with that bulking presence at his back, feeling the keen point of Felix’s attention as his hands hovered over the keyboard, ready to resume. Instead, he brought up a search engine. Named after the saint, she had said. His fingers shook slightly as he typed.

Saint Felix of Nola, was the prompt result. There was a picture of the man’s defining moment, hiding in a hole whilst a renaissance-looking bruiser stalked past, saved from the hunters only by the intervention of one of God’s smallest creatures. The soldiers had, the story went, seen the web built across the mouth of the holy man’s retreat, and thought it long-abandoned.

Only then did he turn around and see Felix plainly. For a long moment he stared into the expectant, clinical gaze of those round and plate-sized eyes.

Then he hunched back stiffly towards the screen and brought up the bibliography again, because that was his task, and for that, and no other reason, was he tolerated in this house. As the hours stretched towards midnight, he paginated and corrected errors and hunted a few last references through Bechter’s landscape of books with trembling hands. And all the while the vast, many-legged shadow of Felix was squatting, where the wall and ceiling joined, waiting for him to finish.

Fog on the Old Coast Road

Mark West

From where he was in the traffic jam, Tom Barratt couldn’t see what was causing the hold up, though there were some flashing lights visible through the mist ahead. He assumed they were from the paramedic Volvo which had cautiously threaded its way through the gridlock half an hour ago.

“Why aren’t we moving, Dad?”

Tom glanced at Jack, his six-year-old son, sitting in the passenger seat. The boy had been remarkably patient, considering it had taken them almost an hour to drive down Lumley Road from the Skegness seafront to Roman Bank. Having forgotten his Nintendo DS, they’d spent the time recounting their great day out at the seaside – the funfair, eating fish and chips sitting on the pier, the donkey rides and the land train, football in the sand and too long in an amusement arcade – and that had kept both their spirits up. It didn’t help, though, that the weather was getting worse. A generally overcast day, a sea-mist had rolled in around lunchtime and was slowly turning into a heavy fog.

“I think it’s an accident, mate.”

Jack braced himself on the arms of his booster seat, lifting up enough that he could see clearly. “Someone’s in trouble.”

“Uh huh.”

“Do you think we’ll be able to move soon? How are we going to get Mum?” There was an element of panic creeping into Jack’s voice, the worry that they wouldn’t get to Boston in time to pick up Clare, his Mum and Tom’s wife.

“If we can’t get by on the A52, we’ll find another way.”

“But what if we’re not on time?”

“Then I’ll phone her. Seriously, we’ve got plenty of time; she’ll still be eating and chatting with her mates.” Tom looked at the dashboard clock. They had a little over ninety minutes before they were due to pick Clare up from the Ghost Pearl restaurant in Boston - plenty of time, assuming they moved within the next thirty minutes.

“But you’re driving.”

Tom smiled and pulled his phone from his pocket, dropping it into the cup holder on Jack’s seat. “There you go, you’re in charge of the phone, okay? If we need to ring Mum, it’s there.” Jack picked up the phone, a smile on his face. “We don’t need to ring her now, just if we run out of time.”

“Oh, okay,” said Jack, an exaggerated frown on his face, though he put the phone back.

Tom laughed and, within a few seconds, Jack joined him. Tom patted his son’s knee as the car in front moved forward a few feet.

“We’re moving.”

Tom reached through the gap between the seats, grasping for the road map. His fingertips caught one edge and he started to pull.

“We’re moving again, Dad!”

“Okay mate,” said Tom, walking his fingertips along the spiral binding. He got a good grip and pulled. “I really need to get Sat-Nav, you know.”

“Move forward, Dad, come on.”

Tom edged the car forward – and from the corner of his eye saw Jack nod his appreciation – and thought, from the position of the lights, that the incident must be on the Wainfleet Road, which they needed to take. He checked the map and saw the thin ribbon of a coast road, probably long-since usurped by the A52, that appeared to run alongside the marshes. That was the way to go.

A bus which had been blocking the junction moved, and a few moments later the car in front did too. It had a big nodding dog on the parcel shelf and the sudden movement jerked it into life.

Jack raised his hand, as if to wave at the dog, then smiled at Tom. “The dog’s going.”

Tom smiled. “So are we, mate.” He kept up with the car in front, pulled into the traffic and followed the flow as a policeman directed them away from the accident – the paramedic’s Volvo blocking his view of anything nasty – and past the bus station.

The traffic moved steadily as cars ahead peeled off into various side-roads and Tom checked the dashboard clock again – still plenty of time. The fog had thickened slightly and whilst visibility at ground level wasn’t bad, the tops of the trees and lamp posts were all but gone into the mist.

Jack was quiet, watching the road, his left thumb in his mouth, a sure sign that he was relaxed. Tom took the first left and dog-legged his way through various residential streets. “There’s the beach!” said Jack eagerly. His thumb glistened in the glow from the street lights. The sea was obscured by the fog.

“We’re on our way, Jack, we wanted the coast road and we’ve found it.”

“You’re very clever,” said Jack with a grin and he patted Tom’s leg, then sat back in his chair and began to suck his thumb again.

The road was wide, with big detached houses on the right and the beach to the left. A couple of cars passed them, coming the other way, but their own lane was empty. Street lights, visible only as small white glows in the fog, stopped once the houses did.

They passed through a tiny hamlet, with just a dozen or so houses, each of them boarded-up. Someone had painted graffiti on one, a round face with dots for eyes, a wide mouth with three rows of sharp teeth and horns. It was stupid, a childish attempt at the devil, but it unsettled Tom for some reason. A dog nosed through a pile of rubbish in front of some upturned dustbins and looked up as they drove by. It was thin to the point of emaciation.

After the abandoned hamlet, the fog lifted enough that Tom could see patches of blue sky between gaps in the murk.

“The fog’s lifting,” he said and checked the rear-view mirror. “I think it’s coming after us though.”

“What, chasing us?” Jack twisted around in his seat and Tom laughed.

“No, it’s coming down the coast but we’ve got in front of it. Fog’s like rain, it can’t hurt you.”

“Charlie got hit by a bit of ice when it rained once, he said it really hurt.”

“I think that was probably hail.”

“No, it was ice.”

They drove in silence for a few minutes. Fields became visible on the right, some of them planted with crops, most populated by small groups of cattle and sheep.

On the nearside, probably half a mile ahead, a dark shape appeared in the mist. As they got closer, Tom could see it had once been a petrol station but was now long since abandoned. The pumps had been removed and some attempts had been made to drill out the concrete islands, though small chunks survived here and there. The canopy was sagging, the corrugated metal punctured with holes. The shop was still intact, though the windows were boarded up and covered with graffiti. The sign was missing and Tom wondered what the price of a litre had been when they threw in the towel.

They passed a sign for ‘Kingston-Next-The-Sea’ and, straight after it, was a pub with three cars parked on the tarmac apron in front. A mini adventure playground was visible in the back garden.

A sign – “30 miles per hour - Slow Down!” – flashed and Tom obeyed as they drove through the town. Kingston was little more than a high street, lined to the right with shops built into the ground floor of three storey buildings. A park and a civic-looking building went by on the left. A few people were walking in the light mist and several cars were parked in marked bays.

After the high street ended, they passed a football ground and Jack turned in his chair.

“Dad? I need a wee.”

“Now?”

“Yes, sorry.”

“Hey, no need to say sorry mate, that’s fine.”

Jack nodded and put his hands in his groin, a sure sign that holding on wasn’t going to be an option for long.

A sign revealed itself through the mist, showing a bucket & spade and WC. “There we go,” said Tom. He indicated and turned left into a narrow lane, bordered on either side by high hedges. The road dropped slightly into a wide, circular, gravelled car park. There was one other car, a yellow mini Metro, parked in the space furthest from the entrance. The pay and display machine sat in front of a small, squat toilet block and Tom parked next to it. As soon as he’d turned the engine off, Jack was sliding out of his seat and pushing open the passenger door. He’d raced around the front of the car before Tom caught up with him.

After they’d both been to the toilet they stood against the railings that separated the car park from the beach. The tide was out and there were a couple of hundred yards before the sea began. Mist hung above it, slightly further out and the sun was barely visible as a pale disk. Southwards, to his right, Tom saw that the beach petered away into grassy marshland but it stretched to the north as far as Tom could see. There appeared to be no one else on the beach.

He checked his watch - they still had forty minutes to get to Boston. “Did you want to have one last go on the beach?”

“Really? Can we?”

Jack ran onto the sand and Tom got the football out of the boot, before following him. Old wooden groynes, marooned now, stood guard on the damp sand. A concrete structure, presumably to hide some kind of outlet pipe, acted as a divider between the beach and the start of marsh.

“Jack!” Tom yelled and kicked the ball as hard as he could. It sailed up into the air, caught a gust of wind and curled away to the right. Jack, standing still with his head tipped back, watched it go over him and, with a delighted shout, ran after it. The ball bounced a few times until the wet sand deadened the momentum and it rolled gently against one of the groyne posts.

Jack raced for the ball and, when he reached it, tried to kick it back. It didn’t go far. Tom started down the beach towards him, as Jack kicked the ball again. It moved a little further this time, onto the dry sand and the boy chased after. Another kick, a little further and Jack was grinning at him. “It’s at your end now, you kick it.”

Laughing, Tom retrieved the ball and the pair of them spent a happy fifteen minutes or so kicking it to one another. Jack’s inability to stand in the same place meant that the game saw them move away from the car park, towards town. Tom kept an eye on the tide just to make sure Jack didn’t get caught out by it if the ball rolled down to the waterline.

“I’m getting good at football, aren’t I Dad?”

“You certainly are, mate.”

Tom’s phone gave a feeble ring, sounding very unhealthy and he took it out of his pocket. The signal bars flickered between none and one. The second bar briefly flashed and the phone beeped.

“Are you playing, Dad?”

Tom kicked the ball back. “I’m just checking my phone.”

“Can I have a look for some crabs then?”

Tom checked the sea. “Yes, but only look in the pools by the wood, okay?”

Jack made a huge show of sighing with his shoulders. “Yes, Dad,” he said. “It’s not like I’m a silly little kid or anything.”

Tom smiled. The phone beeped once before the signal bars disappeared altogether. He checked his watch – it was time to go.

He glanced up, to see Jack bending over looking into the first pool of water he’d come to. Satisfied he was safe, Tom looked out to sea. The fog was denser now and creeping closer.

Jack stood up straight, wiping his hands on his jeans. He looked briefly at Tom, as if to make sure that he was still there and began striding across the sand, heading for the next set of groynes.

“Jack!” Tom called, cupping his hand around his mouth, “Stay there!”

The boy showed no signs of having heard and continued to trudge to the groynes.

“Jack!”

Someone moved onto the beach from the car park and Jack felt a tingle of unease as they moved in Jack’s direction. He couldn’t put his finger on why, but something was amiss. From this distance, a couple of hundred yards and in the increasingly poor visibility, it looked like a very tall, very thin person but beyond the general shape he couldn’t make out any details.

Jack was still walking, unaware that someone was coming down the beach towards him. Maybe the person was just heading for the sea, their trajectory a coincidence, but Tom didn’t want to risk it.

“Jack! Stay there!”

The person seemed to move quicker at hearing the shout and appeared to glide over the uneven sand. Tom started to run, calling his son at the same time. Closer, closer. “Jack!” Closer still.

Jack reached the groynes and turned, as if noticing the person for the first time. The boy stood, waiting patiently until the stranger reached him and, together, they walked around the wooden posts and behind the panels, disappearing from sight.

“No!” Tom ran harder, his feet sinking into the sand and slowing him down, as if this was all a dream. He angled sideways towards the harder packed sand and when he reached it, his speed increased.

“Jack!”

The groyne was close now, but Tom couldn’t see Jack or the stranger. He kept running, his lungs burning, his legs feeling so strong he could perhaps run a marathon.

He slammed into the first wooden support of the groyne and propelled himself around it, his hands rubbing over the rough and slimy texture. He was just about to call his son’s name again when the word died in his throat.

Jack was kneeling down, the top of his head almost touching the wooden slats. At first, Tom thought he was injured, until he saw that his son was gingerly fishing in the pool at his feet, as if he both wanted and couldn’t bear the thought of a crab touching him.

“Jack?”

Jack looked up, as if startled that his Dad was right there. “Ooh,” he said, “you scared me.”

Tom took a deep breath, trying to settle his breathing. “Why did you come down here?”

His son beamed him a big smile. “To see the crabs. I told you.”

Tom couldn’t see the stranger anywhere. Ahead of him, the fog bank was making land across the marsh but there was no one there. Towards the sea, the horizon now lost, the beach was empty and he knew the person hadn’t walked towards the car park or the town because he’d have seen them.

Had he really seen anyone, or was it some kind of illusion – a trick of the light, playing off the fog? Jack didn’t seem worried and so Tom decided to let it go, not wanting to spook his son unnecessarily.

“You did, of course you did,” Tom said and knelt down to ruffle his son’s hair. “Come on, Jack, we need to get moving.”

“Aw, Dad.”

“No, come on, we’ve got to go and get Mum.”

“Oh, okay then,” said Jack and jumped to his feet. As Tom stood up, he could see someone standing in the middle of the beach, level with the car park. He felt a chill run across his shoulders and his scalp pulled tight. He couldn’t make out the person’s face, but they seemed to be very tall and wearing a long coat.

Jack walked around behind him and started up the beach, skipping. Tom moved quickly, to get between him and the stranger but when he glanced over, the person was gone.

“What the…” he started.

“What’s up, Dad?”

What was up? He was seeing someone, perhaps walking their dog or taking their daily constitutional and what did he think, really? That they were after his son? “Nothing, I just want to get going before the fog hits.”

“We don’t want to leave Mum waiting, do we? You’d be in big trouble then.”

Tom laughed, the innocence of the remark surprising him out of his worries.

He unlocked the car as they walked off the beach and, whilst Jack got in, put the football in the boot. He glanced at the Metro, which had clearly not moved for a while – the roof and bonnet were coated in a healthy layer of sand and there was a Police Aware sticker on the driver’s window.

Something moved inside it.

“Stay in the car, Jack,” Tom said and made his way across the car park, taking a wide arc to keep clear of the car. As he got closer, he thought he saw movement again, as if someone was sitting in the driver’s seat and was trying to hunch down, out of view.

Tom glanced back to his car. Jack was looking out of the window and waved. Tom waved back and, as he turned to the Metro, movement on the beach caught his eye. He looked up. The stranger was standing at the edge of the soft sand, his face obscured by the fog that whirled around him, also hiding parts of his arms and legs. The stranger raised his hand, as if in greeting and Tom turned and rushed back to the car. He pulled open the door, got in and switched the engine on.

“Hold tight, mate,” he said and reversed sharply out of the spot, wheel-spinning on the loose gravel and speeding up the lane towards the main road.

“That man smelled funny,” said Jack, slowly and carefully.

Tom looked at him. “What man, where?”

“The man on the beach. He came to see the crabs with me.”

Tom put a hand on Jack’s knee and brought the car to a stop at the junction. “Are you okay, did he say anything to you?”

Jack looked at his Dad, a puzzled expression on his face. “No, he just looked into the water with me.”

As far as Tom could see there were no cars coming, but the fog had thickened considerably and he couldn’t see the town. Taking a chance, he put his foot down and the tyres squealed against the tarmac.

He flicked on his full beam but the glare was reflected, dazzlingly, off the fog so he switched it off. He kept his foot down, wanting to make time, to get to Clare as arranged, but also to get as far away from this place as possible. He hoped the incident of the man standing with him wouldn’t give Jack bad dreams.

On the right, a diffused glow of multi-coloured lights came into view through the gloom. Tom and Jack looked at each other and the boy shrugged. “Petrol station,” said Tom, as they got closer, “at least this one’s open.”

He looked back at the road just as a dark shape came out of the fog, walking in front of them. Tom slammed the brakes on and twisted the wheel, forcing the car to slew across the lane towards the petrol station entrance. The man in the road moved as if he was trying to get in the way and get hit rather than avoid any impact.

The sound of the collision was a dull thud. Tom stamped the brakes again and, from the corner of his eye, saw Jack’s head whiplash into the back of the chair. The car juddered to a halt, half on the petrol station apron and the man ran towards the shop.

“Fuck,” said Tom. His arms were braced on the steering wheel, painful at the elbows and wrists. He looked at Jack and the boy looked back at him, big tears hanging on his eyelids, threatening to spill at any moment. “Are you alright, Jack?”

Jack nodded, slowly. “You said a swear.”

“I know, I’m sorry, are you okay, how does your neck feel?”

“Fine.”

Tom ran his hand over Jack’s head and down the back of his skull and around his neck. Everything felt fine. “You sure?”

“Yes. Who was that, did we hit him?”

“I don’t know, I couldn’t see him properly. But I’m going to find out.”

Tom drove up onto the forecourt and parked directly in front of the night-pay window. “Stay here,” he said and waited for Jack to nod, “I’ll only be gone a minute. If I’m any longer, I’ll come and get you.”

“Okay, Daddy.” Jack gave him a big smile, but Tom could see something in his eyes that made him feel sad.

Tom held his hand out and waited until Jack gave him five. “I’ll just be inside, alright, I’ll come and get you in a minute.”

Tom got out and locked the car. He waved to Jack, then strode towards the shop entrance. The fog had pulled the temperature down, making the air feel crisp and from here he couldn’t see the road which meant it was getting denser. That wasn’t good.

He looked through the shop windows but they appeared to be covered with some kind of film, maybe to deflect the sun and keep it cooler inside, so he found himself staring at his own face.

Tom glanced back at the car, only just visible now, and waved to Jack. When his son waved back, Tom pushed the door and all the lights went out.

The change was startling. The forecourt lights, the sign, the shop lights, everything was off. Combined with the fog, visibility was now almost non-existent and Tom’s first thought was to get back to the car as quickly as he could. If the lack of light had startled him, it must have terrified Jack.

Somebody moaned. The sound made him jump. His head suddenly felt hot and a cool sweat prickled against his forehead.

“Hello? Who’s there?” The only sound he could hear was a faint crackling, as if an electrical connection was shorting out. “I saw you come in here, you must be hurt.”

If the moaning hadn’t come from the man he’d hit, then there had to be someone else in here - the cashier at the very least, if the petrol station was open. Other customers maybe? Why weren’t they talking or shouting?

One last time. “Hello?” Still no response. The crackling noise erupted for a short burst. He looked out of the windows but could only see the whiteness of the mist. The shape of the car was a blur through the furthermost window. Jack had put the interior light on.

Tom took out his house-keys and felt on the ring for the little Maglite torch Clare had bought him - saying it was from Jack - for his last birthday. He hoped his son hadn’t worn the battery down, playing with it. He held the torch up and switched it on and, although the light was feeble, it served its purpose.

The shop was empty and had been for quite some time. The floor was covered in grit and dust and, although there were lots of footprints in it, none of them looked recent. The shelves were empty, some of them broken, all of the ads and banners torn away. Towards the front of the shop, the counter was a blank space, the flap up.

The crackling noise started again as a strip light flickered above the cigarette display. Another moan sounded behind Tom and he spun around, holding the torch up. The beam didn’t do much to penetrate the gloom but he could make out empty magazine racks and a drinks fridge with the doors gaping open. There were two darker rectangular shapes on the back wall - toilets, he supposed.

“Who’s in there?” he called.

The moaning came again and, deep within it, a word. Tom leaned forward, desperate to hear. The moan came again, the word just barely audible. The light crackled but he didn’t turn around, focussing every ounce of his concentration on the moaning. There, again and the word, short and harsh. Still he couldn’t quite catch it.

“Are you hurt?”

The light crackled, louder this time and he turned. A dark shape moved in front of the cigarette display, then dropped out of sight behind the counter. Was it kids, someone from the town playing tricks? Pointing the Maglite down, he walked briskly towards the counter, the floor gritty under his feet. The counter-top was covered in dust too and someone had drawn a face in it, the same face he’d seen on the abandoned house - round face, dots for eyes, too many teeth.

“Who’s there?” he asked, louder now. He stepped through the gap, his torch still trained on the floor. There was nobody in the walkway and the dust and sand on the floor hadn’t been disturbed in a long time.

The voice was the barest of whispers, coming from just in front of him. “Tom?”

He raised the torch high above his head but it didn’t illuminate anyone in the room. All he could see were ruined and wrecked shelves. He looked out of the night-pay window and there was Jack, sitting patiently in the car. He saw his Dad and stuck his thumb up. Tom made the same gesture.

“That’s it,” he called, “I’ve tried to help but I’m leaving now.”

He walked back through the shop, heading towards the entrance. There was a creaking noise, like a door being slowly pushed open after a long time closed. Biting his lip, he kept moving. The crackling sounded again and he tried to ignore it. The entrance seemed to get further away with every step he took.

He heard his name again, whispered close to his ear. Outside the window, the fog seemed to press hard against the glass, taking away from sight everything behind it. The light crackled and he looked towards the counter. In the flickers, he saw a man standing and staring at him. He dipped in and out of sight, in time with the light and when that died, he was gone.

Tom backed up, left arm outstretched feeling for the door. His fingers brushed cool glass. The creaking door sounded again behind him.

There was movement on the forecourt, more dark shapes moving in and out of the fog.

Jack.

The light behind the counter flickered and there was the man, in each wash of illumination, staring at him. Tom backed further, felt something brush his arm. He turned, saw no one. The light above the two doors on the back wall flickered into life, illuminating a safety sign. Standing under it, only visible when the light was on, stood another man, grey and solemn, staring at Tom.

He reached for the door – where the fuck was it?

More lights flickered across the shop, each of them illuminating someone in the stutter, all of them grey and solemn.

Tom turned, looking for the door and as he raised his hand, he realised that he could only see it when the lights were flickering on.

~*~

Clare Barratt stood outside of the Ghost Pearl restaurant and watched as Angie got into the taxi.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come back to mine, Clare?”

She managed a laugh. “No, it’s okay, Tom’ll be along in a minute. But thanks anyway.”

“Okay, I’ll see you soon.”

Clare waved and watched the taxi drive away, her annoyance at Tom smouldering in her belly. The idiot knew to pick her up for five, she’d told him to make sure he left Skegness in plenty of time. She pulled her phone out of her handbag and dialled his mobile. It rang for thirty or more seconds and she was just bracing herself to leave an angry voicemail when it was picked up.

“Hello?”

“Jack? It’s Mummy.”

“Hello, Mummy.”

“Where are you, my lovely?”

“In the car.”

“Where’s Daddy?”

“I don’t know, he went into the garage and he hasn’t come out. I don’t know where we are, please come and get me.”

“But I don’t know where you are, Jack, tell me where you are.”

“I don’t know, Mum, we went to the beach then hit that man and now we’re in the garage.”

“Hit a man? What?”

There was a pause, then Jack said, “It’s okay, Daddy’s coming.” Another pause. “Oh, that’s weird.”

“What is, Jack, what’s weird?”

“I can see through him.”

Dark Peak

Kim Lakin-Smith

Mist drifted over the tors and moorland. The snow on the peaks had hardened to a crisp. Dry stone walling glittered with hoar frost.

Mary Francis saw the barns, nestled against the hill as if taking solace from its shadow. The path was rugged and slippery. Mary kept her skirts hitched up as she navigated her way towards the barns. It was the sort of afternoon which should be spent darning beside the wood stove with Alice, the old cat, snoring on a cushion nearby. But here she was, and the weather meant the route was treacherous to any except the most experienced of guides.

Wind gusted around the stone buildings as she approached. 1647 AD was carved into the lintel over the doorway.

“Hello?” She pinched her coat collar at her neck. When no one answered, she rapped lightly on the door which was cobbled together from old nails and planks of sodden timber.

Mary bent forward to peer in at a crack but the door swung back. A troll shuffled forward – at least that was Mary’s first impression of a woman so old she might have crumpled to dust on the spot. Clothing hung off the woman’s shoulders like clumps of cobweb. Her hair was long, grey and wild as a dog’s. The squinting eyes were rheumy and accusing.

“What manner of spirit are you? Past, present or future?” The woman snorted and shook her head at her own joke. She swung a paraffin lantern in close to Mary’s face. The flame spluttered.

“May I come in?” Mary blanched against the glare.

“Wants to come in? There’s a new thing. Quite peculiar, but come on then.”

Mary felt bustled inside without the old woman even touching her. The door slammed to at her back and was bolted shut.

The interior of the barn was cramped – no bigger than the family room in her parents’ tin house. The walls were decorated with maps, graphs, handwritten lists, bible quotations, newspaper cuttings, and sketches. The paperwork overlapped in places, suggesting years dedicated to the same research subject. Some items were marked with a cross – dismissed as irrelevant, Mary presumed.

“Warm yourself by the fire.” The old woman beat her hands together against the chill. Her wrists and knuckles were bound with leather strips, leaving the fingers free to work.

Mary was glad to stand in front of the wood burner. The smoke was fed to the outside via a diagonal flume. The tube leaked at one join so that the room grew foggy now and then, and smelt of bonfires.

“Are you researching the new dam?” Mary scanned the paperwork. Such an array of jumbled up words. She recognised a large map mounted on a board and speckled with pins. “Dark Peak… Coach and Horses, Dovestone Tor, Cakes of Bread, Back Tor. I know the layout hereabouts roughly.” She hugged herself. “At least I do when the weather’s fine.”

The old woman shuffled over to the corkboard. “I’d offer you something to eat or drink but you’ll have no need of that.” She pressed a new pin into the map. Mary judged the position as their current location.

“Negative ions, but that’s not so unusual.” The old woman tapped the glass of a large brass barometer and clucked her tongue.

Mary wasn’t hungry or thirsty, just desperately cold. It was as if she had been wandering the moors for days without respite or shelter.

The old woman nodded at a pile of clothing in one corner. “If the chill is in your bones you can ransack those odds and sods for extra layers. Walkers leave stuff behind on occasion. There’s a raggedy jumper left by one of those strange ‘uns who like to make a racket with their drums. Cape too with a hood, sort to keep the rain out. Probably left by one of the old ‘uns, them with yappy dogs, beer breath and crumbs in their beard. Help yourself.”

Mary didn’t want to step away from the heat coming off the wood burner. But the wind moaned in the stove flume and she remembered the long journey ahead and the need to set out before nightfall.

The knitted jumper came down past her hips – a scraggy old thing that smelt of camphor. An improvement on her cotton blouse alone though. She slid her arms back inside her coat – a snug fit and she was glad of it. The cape fitted over her hat and hung off her shoulders.

“That’s right, lass. Tuck yourself in against the cold.” The old woman struggled into a second cape discarded by the stove and a knitted cap which struck Mary as something fishermen might wear.

She stared at Mary. “I’m assuming you want a guide through the Shifting.”

Mary wasn’t sure what she made of that statement. The door rattled on its hinges. Out there the mist could swallow a person up within a few yards and disguise the sheer drops where the gritstone peak had weathered. It was indeed a shifting landscape. And the sun was going down.

“I need to get home to Birchinlee,” was all she could think to reply. Mary saw a new sharpness in the old woman’s gaze.

“What’s your name, lass?”

“Mary Francis.”

The old woman sucked air between her teeth and shook her head. “Too old to remember faces.” She turned to the cork board and tapped a finger against the newest pin. “Just like that she comes,” she said softly.

When she turned back around, the old woman’s eyes were glistening. Mary swallowed and hugged herself against the cold that was to come.

Her guide bundled a few items into a knapsack, among them a compass and a dark brown loaf fetched out of a mesh-fronted cupboard. She picked up the poker beside the stove. “Iron.” The old woman brandished the poker before packing it away. “Good for ghouls, both living and dead.” She tugged her fisherman’s hat down over her ears and picked up the lantern. Hobbling over to the door, she glanced back at Mary. “Let’s be having you, lass. This day isn’t getting any younger.”

~*~

The bracken was ankle-deep, the exertion of the climb burning her throat and lungs, but the old woman pressed on. The girl was a silent presence at her back; it was all too easy to forget she was there. Every so often, the old woman paused for breath and looked back over a shoulder. It wasn’t her imagination. The girl continued to follow in her footsteps.

Curiosity got the better of her. “The reservoir is high, hmm?” She pointed down to the expanse of water in the valley below. “Sometimes in the heat of summer you see the remains of the villages that were drowned. Derwent Church steeple used to poke right out of the water. Few things as queer as that sight, at least until the safety-conscious so and sos demolished it.”

The girl hummed softly to herself. She didn’t seem perturbed by the presence of the reservoir or inclined to comment on it.

“We meet the path here.” The old woman strode out from the heather and onto the snowy path. The girl followed after.

~*~

“The Coach and Horses!” Mary felt a surge of joy as they approached the gritstone outcrops. She didn’t stop to question the strength of her reaction. Instead she forgot the cold, forgot her seventeen years of age too, and clambered about the circular stacks of rock. Mist closed in around them.

“I saw these stones from the road when Pa brought us to live in Tin Town. Folk are right. From that distance, they look like a coach and horses.”

The old woman clucked her tongue. “I know them better as the Wheel Stones. They turn time.” The rheumy eyes stared up at Mary. “Most folk have no idea the Shifting even exists.” She tapped the spot beneath her left eye. “Most folk are blind to it.”

“Will we be home before dawn?” asked Mary, running a hand along the roughly textured stone. Below, the old woman prattled on.

“England’s Bermuda Triangle – that’s what they call the White Peak and Dark Peak. I don’t suppose that means anything to you, lass. You haven’t lived with its peculiarities day and night – and by live, I mean really live. For year after year until your bones seize in their sockets and your mouth gets powder dry.” The old woman gestured ahead. “We should make it to the Salt Cellar with the remains of the day.”

Reluctantly, Mary clambered down and trudged after the old woman. It had pleased her heart to see the great weathered rocks. Journeying south of Dovestone Tor, she was similarly taken by another of Dark Peak’s treasures – the gritstone pillar known as the Salt Cellar. Mist bled around its edges. Mary ran ahead and climbed the jutting crags. Cold lay heavy in her lungs but the exertion helped the blood flow.

“Too dark for that!” called the old woman from the ground. “The Shifting will suck you up if you don’t stay grounded.”

There was desperation in the old woman’s tone. Mary was irritated. “It’s wonderful up here!” she cried. The atmosphere left her face damp. Out there, past the edge of the gritstone shelf, the mist roiled like an ocean of milk. Anything could inhabit the valley below – an enchanted kingdom, Hell’s gate...

Somewhere at the far reaches of her mind, she heard the old woman calling to her. Her focus stayed on the drop off a few short steps away. It was so very tempting to just step off and swim out into the winter wilds.

The smell of paraffin reached her nose. She sniffed, a little confused about where the smell was coming from. The next moment she ducked instinctually as a tremendous roar assaulted her ears and a colossal shadow passed overhead. Vibrations filtered through the ancient stone, feeding up her body and making her skull ache. The huge machine clipped Derwent Tor, engines shrieking and spluttering. There was an instant of white noise followed by the cacophony of scorched bedrock and tearing metal as the aircraft impacted a few miles north.

The violence of the crash left its bruise on the atmosphere. Tearful with fear, Mary slid back down to the ground. A glowing lantern swung in close to her face.

“I said to stay close! The Shifting nearly had you then.” The old woman thumbed her nose. “I’m used to the stench of it. But you, well, you’d just let it drag you right on in.”

Mary had no idea what the old woman was talking about. Was she insensible to the events taking place around them?”

“The aeroplane…” Her voice trailed off into a sob.

The old woman shook her head. “These hills are littered with crash sites. No end of speculation why. Some say we’re on a flight path for inexperienced pilots in the military. Add to that bad weather and these dark peaks… In both World Wars, bombers returning from Europe would overshoot their base and run out of fuel over these dark hills.” The rheumy eyes moved in close, lantern swinging from the old woman’s thumb. “The incident you just witnessed is from 1943. Pilot Officer Denis Kyne took off in an Oxford LX518 for his first solo night flight. Kyne set course for Condover. Nothing more was ever heard from him.” She sniffed, accepting of the fact. “Time to get going. Between here and Back Tor, we’ll hear them from all across the valley.”

“Hear who?” Mary tucked her rain cape close.

Thrusting the lantern out, the old woman nodded at the darkness. “The dead ‘uns,” she said.

~*~

What could account for the Shifting, how it shuffled time and events and laid them out in a new order? Like sand, it trickled into and over itself. Or was the phenomenon more like tectonic plates, sliding into new positions that were out of place and out of the ordinary? The old woman was used to the figures in the mist, their flying jackets, leather caps and goggles to protect against a wind they could no longer feel. The girl was less jaded. Figures bubbled up from the mire either side of the path and Mary made a croaking sound, her throat contracting around a scream.

“Do you see?” she cried, faltering on the path.

“Aye, I see, and that’s all that matters. You on the other hand should nip your hood in close and concentrate on the way ahead. Leave the spectres to me.” The old woman waited until the girl did as instructed. Reaching into her knapsack, she pulled out the iron poker. It was no kind of weapon against the Shifting, but it would keep the spirits at bay. With the girl staying close, the old woman advanced slowly.

Voices called out from the mist.

“Mayday! Mayday!”

“Ich möchte nicht sterben!”

In-between the panic of those final moments came the banter, singing, and camaraderie of the men’s everyday existence. It was as if the Shifting restructured the airmen’s lives – and deaths – into its own discordant symphony.

The old woman’s lantern lit the way past the leaning rock platelets known as the Cakes of Bread and onto the mossy incline leading to Back Tor. The path was lost beneath the snow, but the woman checked her compass occasionally and seemed to have a feel for the way of it. Figures reached for them from the shadows, graveworn and charred. The old woman slashed at them with the poker and they dissolved into the mist.

“I just want to go home,” whimpered the girl.

“Aye,” said the old woman.

A few more trudging steps and the Shifting released them, like pressure popping.

“Those men seemed lost,” said the girl, wide-eyed and calm now. Apparently her understanding of events just seconds before had altered too. “Someone should show them the way home,” she murmured, staring back over a shoulder.

~*~

The path meandered through the heathered moorland. A small owl glided towards them on still and silent wings, disappearing back into the mist as suddenly as it had appeared. The air had a taste of iron.

Mary watched the old woman scoop up a handful of snow, pop it into her mouth and curse its chill. A few hunks from the loaf of bread were devoured as well. Mary might have joined in the meagre feast if she had felt the need.

“Are you all right?” she asked when the old woman set out along the path again, her breathing laboured.

The old woman snorted. “I’m ancient and tired. It’s not natural to have one’s days stretched out like this, but what to do about it? The Shifting swept me up when I was seventeen.”

“My age,” exclaimed Mary, seemingly pleased by the fact.

“Aye, you are. Lost too. Been lost a while.”

“And you are guiding me home.”

“I do hope so, Mary. I do hope so.”

Their conversation petered out as they reached a large cairn of stones.

“Lost Lad.” The old woman directed her lantern at the cairn. “He leaves me be now, but you may have to abide him.”

“What do you mean?”

“The boy was forced to shelter here when the weather turned cruel. He died, his dog too. The shepherd who found him scratched ‘Lost Lad’ onto a stone. Ever since, shepherds are said to add another stone to the cairn when they pass.” She put a hand against her chest, not through emotion Mary realised, but in an effort to calm her erratic breathing.

“I know that folk tale,” Mary said quietly.

“Excuse me, Miss.”

The voice came from the mist. Mary clutched her rain cape closer, willing it to shield her as the shape of a snuffling animal appeared, followed closely by a figure.

“Excuse me, Miss. I’m lost, and it’s bitter you see. Even Bobbit here feels it, don’t you boy?” The child bent to stroke the dog’s head. Unlike her faded memory of the airmen, these apparitions seemed less substantial, older perhaps. The body of the boy and the dog were strangely colourless, as if formed of the mist.

“You see them?” A few paces in front, the old woman halted. Lantern held before her face, she looked ghoulish. “The Shifting has taken us into their time. He was a lad from Derwent village, long before it was flooded.”

“My father is working on Derwent Dam. He says they’ll have to flood some villages to make the reservoir.” It made sense to Mary to keep on talking. If she kept focused on what was real, the apparitions of the boy and his dog might fade away.

“Please, miss.” The spirit’s voice was more insistent now while the dog gave a soft whine. “I’m cold, awful cold. Save a lost lad, could you?”

“Ignore them.” The old woman strode over, brandishing the iron poker at the shadows.

“How is he talking to me?” exclaimed Mary.

“Lost too, aren’t you. Fallen between the cracks of the Shifting.”

“I just want to go home.” said Mary. Her head ached and the boy kept on talking.

“Ah, the wind is biting, miss. Just help me find the path, please. Just help me find the path.”

The boy held out his hand to Mary. She stared at the pitiful figure, and was gripped by the same seductive pull she had experienced standing on the ledge of the Salt Cellar. The mist crept closer.

“Help me.” The boy’s hand reached, the arm extending unnaturally. Mary started to raise her hand, overwhelmed by the desire to sink into those depths. To stay cocooned in the shifting white.

A shadow passed in front of her and the twang of reverberating metal broke her reverie. Mary blinked. The old woman had brought the poker cracking down onto the ground. The boy and his dog were gone. Even the mist had lifted slightly, dropping back from its prey.

~*~

Oh, but hadn’t she been just seconds away from losing the girl to the Shifting and finding herself back in that bleak cowshed for the lord only knew how many more years! The old woman willed her nerves to settle as they crossed over the dam. Her heartbeat was frantic as a bird’s.

The water stretched away in a sheet of inky black. Gothic towers, arranged at intermittent points along the brick path, loomed above their heads. They might have crossed a drawbridge to some ancient settlement. Over the years the Shifting had shown her villages where iron was mined and smelted. It had haunted her with the cries of harmed children from the northern moors. She had lived alongside the tourists who trudged in heavy boots, their souls made lighter by the glorious mystery of Dark Peak. She had glimpsed the future too, where war machines scattered the valley – and beyond to where the sun burnt with a savage heat and the land died beneath her feet. All of this, she had experienced while waiting to guide a lost girl home.

Behind her, Mary was humming softly. Apparently the trauma of the Lost Lad’s apparition had faded from her thoughts. They were drawing closer to Tin Town, the girl with happy determination, the old woman with ragged breaths and pain behind her ribs.

After crossing the dam, the path widened, allowing the two to walk alongside one another.

“Do you remember what happened earlier?” said the old woman suddenly. “Before you knocked on my door and asked me to show you home?”

Mary sighed. “Maybe I am ailing for something. Nothing stays fixed in my mind. There was a window. I was watching the mist outside. It was rolling like a beautiful ocean.” She glanced over, her wide eyes glistening. “And then there was the stony path and you at the end of it.”

The old woman stopped walking. She would have put a hand to Mary’s shoulder but daren’t risk unsettling the balance between them.

“Mary, when we get to Tin Town and I wave you in at your door, don’t forget one thing. When the Shifting flows by your window, close the curtains and forget it. Keep that part solid in your mind.”

Whether the girl understood what she was saying, the old woman couldn’t tell. Certainly the girl appeared aware of her guide’s struggle to draw breath and keep upright. The iron poker served as walking stick now. The old woman pressed on.

Mist tumbled across the water to one side of the path and billowed through the woodland to the other. Fairholmes, with its car park and visitors centre, shape shifted and was the farmland it once was. Ladybower Reservoir became a snowy valley.

The first glimpse of the temporary town, Birchinlee – or Tin Town as the navies had come to call the place during its brief existence at the start of the nineteenth century – came into view. Mary beamed and chatted, encouraging the old woman to see her to the door.

“I’m afraid of the dark,” she explained, letting her hood fall back.

Over the years, the old woman had only seen remains among the trees – what was left of the waste incinerator, the cellar walls of Derwent Canteen and the raised terraces on which the huts once stood. Now she saw the village anew, if with clouding eyesight. The dwellings wove together from the mist – huts clad in corrugated iron, their tiny windows offering glimpses of light within, wallpapered walls, and homely furnishings. The paraffin street lamps brightened. There was the school and hospitals, the post office and cobbler, the hairdresser and tobacconist, the butchers – all four – and the public house. Voices could be heard from within, belonging to hard-bodied men who worked the dam site and had built a village to sustain their families. The snow lay over cobbles now and from every direction arose some familiar noise – the hum of the incinerator, the cries of a teething babe, the hollow moan of the wind through Tin Town.

And then they arrived at the door to the seventeen year old Mary Francis’s home.

Shrugging off her borrowed rain cape, removing her coat beneath and the raggedy jumper under, the girl passed them over and asked, “Will you come in?”

The old woman slumped against the hut wall for support. “No, lass. You go on now. I’ll just catch my breath.”

Young Mary nodded. “Well, goodbye then, and thank you.” She opened the door, a rectangle of light spilling out across the cobbled street. The door closed to with a soft click.

Mary Francis slid down to the icy ground. For 102 unnatural years, she had waited for the Shifting to reunite her ailing body with its child soul. So very very long she had waited, until finally the patterns of time realigned and allowed the two Marys to guide each other home.

Cradled in the nook of Dark Peak, the aged ghost crumbled to dust and blew away on the wind. Tin Town was a sparse collection of ruins once more. A raggedy jumper and an abandoned rain cape lay discarded on the snowy ground.

The Things I See

By Theresa Derwin

I don’t see a carousel. I see the souls of dead children. The lights on the carousel jump and flicker, fireflies trapped in a jam jar. A wooden horse painted shades of pinks and reds with flecks of gold, turns round and round in time to the music of the organ. Always last to finish the race; it’s going nowhere, carrying the souls on its broken, tarnished back. The horse was new a hundred years ago.

He says I’m imagining things. I can’t see them. They’re not really there. But I know better.

~*~

Out of the corner of my eye, I see the young boy watching me. He’s watching me concoct a recipe for tonight’s party. I hope he likes it. Mike, that is, not the dead child. The dead child can’t eat, or taste for that matter. Although I have no doubt that in life the child might have liked Italian food. Maybe it’s the dark eyes, the sunken cheeks more olive than pale, or the way his doleful eyes reach out with hunger. Part of me wants to ask the boy, and part of me wants to ignore the impulse, pretend I can’t see him. I’m afraid he’ll answer if I speak.

No, I can’t see him as I chuck a chunk of garlic into the sizzling wok, breathing in the pungent, heady aroma of the ingredients, bathing in a myriad of spices, rich and sweet. I imagine a stream of scented smoke wafting above me, the dead kid following the scent with his nose like the Bisto kid, and I have to stop myself from laughing. Laughing right now would be a very bad thing. I wouldn’t be able to finish prepping for the dinner party.

Yes, I think to myself, as I throw in the onions and chopped coloured peppers. He looks Italian. I wonder what his name is.

~*~

I’ve been seeing things as long as I can remember. When I was a kid I used to go to the park with my sister and some of the other kids from the street. We would run across the old stone bridge to the small clearing in the centre of an expanse of dry, yellow grass, and climb onto the roundabout. James, who was a good deal older and wiser than me (and at least 5ft tall), used to spin us round and round, faster and faster, while we all clung desperately to the red and green wagon wheel, hair whipping madly past us. James used his full strength to push us, and I almost wet myself with the excitement, my scrawny fingers tightly gripping the iron tentacles of the metallic wheel. I was five.

That was the first time I ever saw anything. As the wheel spun round, I saw the blurred face of a young girl in the distance. Tracey couldn’t see the little girl sitting on the swing. Only I could.

The girl was a small, insignificant thing; with carroty curls, vacant, grey eyes peeking out from a pale, sallow, face; orphan Annie in a perverse world. She was swinging slowly, not too high, not too fast, chubby, legs kicking forward and pushing back to give momentum, but not enough force to get her truly high.

James pulled the roundabout to a halt, heels digging into the gravel, using all of his strength to slow us down. Dizzy and exhilarated, we staggered off, collapsing on the damp grass in various heaps of disarray and tangled limbs. Tracey’s ragged breath echoed mine. I looked over at the swing to see the strange girl in the pink dress, but she was gone.

Tracey said I was lying. They always said I was lying.

~*~

I’m not sure of much, but there are a few things that I do know. God is a man (I’m convinced he has to be a man, because only a man could make such an almighty balls up of this twirling ball of green and blue, spinning in the sky). Junk food will make you fat, and Elvis is alive and living in Vegas. (Though I don’t know if he actually gets any work as an impersonator.)

Oh, and kids lie. It’s important that you understand this.

That’s one truth that I found out the hard way.

When I told Mom about the girl on the swing, and how she looked so lonely and I wanted to play with her, Mom told me off. Told me I wasn’t to play with strangers, even if they were children. But she wasn’t a stranger. I called her Annie, though I didn’t know her real name. I knew her from the neighbourhood. She lived on the street at back of ours, so I told Mom that.

Don’t be silly, don’t lie, she said.

But...

But nothing. You have a stupid imagination.

How can imagination be stupid? I thought. What is imagination? I don’t know that word.

Then I saw the picture of the girl in the newspaper. Not sitting on the swing, but in a back garden. I knew it was my friend from the swing and I told Mom so.

The girl didn’t look lonely in the photo. She looked happy. Her curls, red as sunset, fresh cheeks, wearing a new pink dress with flowers on it, similar to the one she wore on the swing. Her skin was pretty and pink, like the dress. I knew those colours were there because I’d seen them in the photo, but all I could see in my head were her curls, writhing on her shoulders; angry snakes surrounding an ashen face.

She looked better in the photo.

In the photo she was smiling. Her smile was healthy and bright, reaching out to me. She could’ve been my friend. At least, if she wasn’t dead, and slightly yellow, I thought.

~*~

So, why should you believe me? Good point, valid question. You know what it’s like. You get so tired of trying to tell the truth that it’s impossible to tell the difference anymore. No one will believe you anyway. Not you, not a mere child. So you bottle it up, store it inside and it bubbles and bubbles, champagne pushing against the cork of its prison, ‘til finally, it bursts through in a jumbled mess and you’re left drowning in it, and no one will believe you now because it’s all a mess.

So when I told people, they didn’t believe me, just as you don’t. I’m so sick and tired of people not believing me. If I had proof it’d be okay.

~*~

I used to have nightmares about the roundabout. I dreamt that the red and green top would spin wildly, a bottle cap unscrewing, flinging its passengers to the ground, breaking their small bodies. Decapitating them with its spinning top.

~*~

Now I dream about the carousel and Alvaro, the Bisto kid. He told me he was half Italian, half Spanish, an eclectic mix of passion and fire, flamenco and food.

I love paella. Paella screams of the sea; salt water and the bitter tang of mussels, crunchy when you taste the shell. Paella reminds me of being abroad. Sitting in the sun, soaking up the rays and the warmth of the sun bouncing on your flesh; the warm breeze tingling on your skin as you look across the wide expanse of the waiting sea, crystal waters painted cerulean blue.

I love the colour blue. It calms me. Did you know there are at least ten words to describe the word ‘blue’?

Alvaro smells of Paella; he smells of dead fish.

~*~

The park holds many fond memories for me, others not so fond. I remember how we used to sing. Now Tracey could sing, and would make music teachers cry out with relief, as opposed to the pain or wincing that normally followed my signing. I thought at the time that I was Tina Turner but without the bad hair. I used to strut my stuff across the living room dance floor or on the stage in the park we had constructed from old crates and cardboard boxes. I’d be squealing at the top of my lungs, copying the moves and the wild gyrations of Miss T and I didn’t really think about it, or about the man who used to stare at me. So, there I was in the park, bopping for all I was worth as Miss T delivering a stunning rendition of What’s Love got to do with it, before switching to Madonna’s Like a Virgin. I was belting it out, a real Diva, complete with backing singers, when my performance was interrupted by the need for a pee. I carefully inched down the broken crates, trying not to catch my skirt on a splinter, leaving my entourage behind to go in search of a private spot to go the toilet.

In the park, there was a cluster of overgrown bushes, trees and weeds just on the edge of the forest. It was the perfect place for privacy; secluded and dark. There was just enough crawl space for me to get through until I hit the small clearing in the centre. Crawling through was an in exercise in pain, twigs crunching under my knees, grabbing at my hair, pulling at my skirt, and scratching my bare legs. But we kids never seemed to mind.

Once I was inside, it was a whole different world – a tantalising jungle to make Indiana Jones proud, full of hidden tunnels and secret corridors. We used to use the clearing to build campfires, hide out from our enemies and make mud pies – survival rations at best. This was our special place, special and perfect. It was also a very convenient place to go to the loo in times of desperation. And I was desperate for a pee.

I’d left it too long as usual, not noticing that the dancing had reacted with my bladder. Finally crouched down, hoisting up my skirt and pulling my knickers down. It was hard to get started, but at last I did what nature intended.

When I was done, I quickly stood up, pulled up my knickers, straightening my skirt and stretching to get rid of the cricks I got while crouching.

That was when I turned towards the jungle doorway and saw the girl from the swing, staring straight at me, dried blood matting her red curls, the two colours blending together in perfect symmetry.

The image still lives with me.

I see the man that stands behind her, waiting patiently, waiting because he knows that she can’t escape, and he will have his trophy of fresh skin, his eyes awash with a feral hunger. I can hear her screams and they echo mine, as his twisted fingers reach out for us, and she stares at me, willing me to see. To understand.

I see my death in her eyes. The knowledge of it seeps out. It blinds and veils until it’s all I can see. My death. Her death.

She knows the exact time and place of my death, the exact circumstances in fact. And it will happen. I will die, with prying fingers touching me, cold steel slashing across my bare chest and belly, covered in dirt and grass, smelling of piss. Unless I remember to run . . .

Fear explodes in my chest, my body reacting before the thought has registered and my mind has had a chance to catch up. Run . . . Run!

I stumble forward, scuttling on all fours, the fresh dirt, remnants of her grave creeping under my fingernails, burrowing deep inside, staining my skin with its poison. All I can do is squeal like a piglet, grunt, squirm and heave as I scurry through the tight gap and into the light beyond; to the wagon wheel and the crates and Tracey, who’s wondering where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing.

And I wanted to tell Tracey where I’d gone, but I was so afraid. I wanted to tell her about seeing the dead girl, the man with stale breath and how I peed on the girl’s grave, but I’m afraid. For the first time in my life I’m really afraid; not the fear of skulking shadows in my bedroom at night, or fear of the coat that hangs on my door and becomes some unknown man in the dark.

This time the terror is real. The man is real.

~*~

I can’t deny him anymore. He visits me, I think, because he knows this, and he knows I can help him. I couldn’t help Annie, but with Alvaro I have a fighting chance. I still hope that there will be at least one child that I can save. And he knows that I’m so tired of fighting the things I see. And he looks so much like the child I could’ve had if I were able.

The onions make me cry. I can feel the wet trickle of tears roll down my cheek and I start to sniffle, so I grab a kitchen towel and blow my nose to clear it. I keep stirring and stirring the wok for tonight’s dinner party, breathing in the scent of the rich sauce.

From the smell of him I’d say he’s been dead about two weeks but I can’t be sure. It feels like he’s been watching me for years. At least I think so, because that’s how long I’ve been cooking spicy food. It makes Alvaro feel at home. And the garlic hides the smell.

Lately, the smell’s getting worse. It’s a wonder that Mike can’t smell it too. But then again, it’s a wonder Mike sees, smells or hears anything. He’s so blind at times. I try so hard to cook things that Mike will enjoy, but he doesn’t seem to enjoy anything anymore, not even these stupid dinner parties.

I acknowledge Alvaro watching me, because I have work to do and I want him out of the way. For just a moment it’s so cold and I have to shut the window.

“Please, Alvaro, stop watching”, I say, “I’ll help you but I have to serve dinner first. Mike has friends outside and they want dinner. Please”.

Obligingly, Alvaro disappears and I think at last, a kid who listens. That’s why Mike decided we weren’t going to have kids. They don’t listen.

With Alvaro gone, I can concentrate on the mechanics of the meal; draining the pasta, one last stir of the simmering sauce, tossing the salad in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. If nothing else, I’ve become more adventurous in the kitchen since he showed up. I suppose you have to take the rough with the smooth: visions of dead people versus panache in the kitchen.

Eventually dinner is ready, and I can breathe a sigh of relief. The food is perched in its perfect plate or bowl, waiting to be served.

So I take off my apron, adjust my skirt and look at my startled, tired face reflected on the gleaming counter top. I share Alvaro’s sad smile, and deep brown eyes. Only he’s in slightly worse shape than me.

I smile. It’s my best one you know. My “hi, how are you, glad you could come, isn’t life perfect?” smile. It goes wonderfully with my perfect fucking dinner.

There will not be death or pain in my dining room.

My perfect smile escorts me from the kitchen to the dining room.

I carry the first of the dishes through to where Mike, Angela and Alan are chatting over a bottle of wine, seated round the table, with Mike at the head of course. Carefully, so as not to spill, I place the pasta dish in the centre and nod towards the bottle of Soave that Mike is pouring, indicating (I hope) that the least he can do is pour me a large one. God knows I need it.

Leaving him to that difficult task I go back into the kitchen and return a couple of minutes later with the rest of the food. We start to eat and both Angela and Alan make a few polite noises about how good it is, but all I can do is stare at Mike’s gaping jaw as he shovels impossibly large spoonfuls of food into his mouth, pasta falling out as he opens to force more in. I’m so fixated by this surreal image that I can’t hear what Alan is saying. I shake myself awake and make a point of listening to Alan’s inane chatter. Verbal diarrhoea, I call it. Angela and Alan, the perfectly matched couple with perfectly matched names. Not like Susan and Mike.

Suddenly I want to scream but close my lips tightly to suppress the urge. I watch Mike scoop even more food into his cavernous maw and it sickens me. He sickens me. What makes it worse is the syrupy blood, dripping slowly down onto his plate from above, blending skilfully with the ripe tomatoes and pasta. Alvaro is leaning on Mike’s shoulder, salivating as Mike continues to eat, oblivious, as he blindly consumes parts of the dead boy.

Well, at least I know someone likes my food.

~*~

After Mom hit me, I swore I would never tell anybody about the things I see. Annie disappeared after a while. I think, to be honest, she got bored of hanging around, of trying to reach me, but I could never really hear her voice or understand her. The more the children visited me, the better I became at understanding what they were saying, but I never knew why they chose me. I still don’t. And I still wake up in a cold sweat at night, to find that there is a child hovering over me, beckoning. I still see Annie’s face in my mind though, and she haunts me now, more than she did when I was a child. They never found her body. I never told them where to find her.

~*~

Alvaro is looking rather fetid now, and he is really starting to stink. I’ve bought some of those clever air fresheners, the ones you plug in or stick to the wall that release intermittent bursts of fragrance, everything from citrus, or freesia to pine or lavender. They’re everywhere. In the kitchen, the living room, the guest room, the bedroom, the stairs and the bathroom. Everywhere. But all I can smell is Alvaro. The lavender can’t bury him. He’s creeping up through my nostrils into my head and I want to gag on the odour.

Mike is beginning to worry about me. I can see him looking at me when he thinks I’m somewhere else, but I’m not, I’m here, waiting for him to call the doctor again. When he thinks I’m elsewhere he reaches for the phonebook and I start to talk to him in the hope he’ll hold back. If he calls the doctor before I help Alvaro I’ll never rest, never be free to sleep. I can’t think. I don’t know how to help him. I’m so tired, so bloody tired.

~*~

Last night I dreamt of Annie. She was riding the roundabout, and this time it was her plump fingers that held onto the cold frame for dear life. This time in the dream I can almost hear her. I’ve grown better at understanding the children. I think I’ve already mentioned that before, haven’t I? That it’s becoming easier, louder even.

They reckon that kids can see things that adults can’t, in the same way that a cat or a dog hears noises we can’t hear, and they meow or growl at an empty space, or a corner because they know that there is someone or something. I don’t think it’s true though. It isn’t just pets or kids that see things. I hear things too, when they want me to hear.

The older I get the more things I see. It didn’t lessen as I left my childhood behind, as I hoped it would. It increased, which doesn’t make sense if what they say is true.

Sometimes it’s too much. I’m a vacuum of sizzling noise, thoughts, feelings; the buzz of a thousand tiny voices running round my brain like insects, scurrying left, right, all over the place. And sometimes those voices have faces, or bodies; bleeding battered bodies.

~*~

I’m dreaming again. Of Annie. I see the man that stands behind her. I can hear Annie’s screams and they echo mine, as his twisted fingers reach out for us, and she stares at me, willing me to see. To understand.

I see her battered body, covered in the dirt, the calloused hands that ram her limp frame into the soil, scooping dirt over her. I can remember that dirt, soft and wriggling with worms, seeping into my fingernails, sneaking up my skin. And the feel of it will never leave me.

~*~

Mike is in the living room, reading the paper and I’m in the kitchen, preparing dinner, when the electricity cuts out. For a minute or two the fear engulfs me, the creature inside my chest beating its puny fists against my rib cage, until Mike calls in that he’s going to check the fuse box and it’ll be al l right. So I start to calm down. It’s okay. There is nothing here in the dark that isn’t here when the lights are on. Besides, if the power comes on quickly enough, the air fresheners will still work. I will still be able to breathe in and smell lavender, not dirt, or blood, or maggots, wriggling deep inside me.

There is a brief flicker, the lights flash on and Alvaro is here again.

This time he’s not alone.

Annie? I think.

It’s hard to tell; she looks a lot worse than before, like the dirt is eating her up inside, adding to the decay. In a dreadful way, I’m pleased to see her and I realise I’ve missed her. A hint of the grime from her tomb still clings to the dried blood that mars the perfection of her curls. Alvaro stands next to her.

Alvaro is looking inside the saucepan, almost on tiptoe, straining to see what Mike will be having for dinner. Every time I cook he shows up, as if he misses food in all its guises. Standing next to Annie, it occurs to me that this is the first time I’ve seen more than one child at once, apart from the time I went to the German markets last Christmas. They had food stands and beer stalls, intricate souvenirs for sale and lots of wonderful things to buy; gingerbread, chocolate covered fruit, spicy sausages and bottles of spiced wine. Alvaro would’ve liked it. I used to love going to the market until the day they brought the carousel. And I saw children riding the gilded horses side by side.

Now I understand what I have to do. I’ve waited too long for this.

~*~

I see Alvaro in the park, riding the roundabout, oblivious to the figure following him. Next I see Alvaro in the dirt, his tattered, bruised body crammed into a small cavity in the ground overgrown with weeds – it has been that long. I feel his last moments, struggling for breath as the earth buries him. His broken fingers reach out in desperation, blindly grasping at the bones of another child – Annie’s remains. I recognise the hand that had saved me.

They are not alone. A myriad of broken bones and decayed frames twist in the darkness with them. A hill of bones rising above the mud in the cavern we used to play in.

I know this place. It’s where the lavender grows. I’ve always been drawn to this spot. Did I always know she was here?

‘Shh, it’s all right, it’s okay, I can tell them where you are’, I whisper, tears dribbling into my mouth, making me retch, ‘It won’t be long now’.

The icy grip in my chest eases just a little and I smell the lavender again. I can breathe. I’m ready to make the call.

I pull out my mobile and punch in the number.

~*~

A million questions –

After they found the children, the police wanted to understand how I knew where they all were.

Who am I?

Most of all, was it me that murdered all of those poor children?

Luckily I have alibis. I’m always home; cooking, cleaning, fawning over Mike. Entertaining his friends.

If I had been born before it all started I probably wouldn’t be safe now. I’m not sure they would’ve given me the benefit of the doubt. But they keep asking; How do I know?

It’s the ‘things I see’ I tell them, ‘If you saw, what I saw . . .’

They look at me strangely, disbelief etched onto their faces.

But it doesn’t matter what they think.

Annie and Alvaro can rest now; and their parents can move on.

So can I.

Presence

Paul Kane

Life is sweet; that’s what he used to say.

He’d borrowed it from his grandfather, who said those words on his deathbed. What Terry used to say, but couldn’t anymore. He was gone. Had been gone for a good three months – not that any week, day, hour, minute or second of those months had been what you could call good.

Not for her, not left behind like this. Annette Griffiths gave a small laugh, which held no humour at all. Left behind; what a strange phrase. Like she was the loser in some kind of race. Or, more accurately, a marathon – where the runner in front had suddenly sped up; then turned a corner, out of sight.

Would she ever catch up to him? Perhaps, someday. But not in this life, because it wasn’t any kind of race you wanted to finish, let alone win.

Annette stood and stared at the boxes and bags in front of her on the landing. Not much to show for a life: a person’s belongings reduced to so much detritus waiting to be taken to charity shops. Although it was nice to think that someone, somewhere, would get the benefit of clothes and books that were of no use to her.

Just reminders of the stabbing pain she still felt.

Of no use to Terry, either. Not now. Not anymore. Never again... She bit her lip, fighting back tears that were threatening to break free from the corners of her eyes. Annette shook her head. She’d done enough of that; too much. Time to pull herself together, be strong. Become the person that she’d pretended to be since –

She’d played the part in public, and especially for little Hayley. There was no sense both of them being in bits; Hayley had always been a daddy’s girl, Terry’s little princess. In a lot of respects his death might even have hit her daughter harder than it had Annette, but then she’d always been quite a nervous child. Annette had only got her back to school a couple of weeks ago, and only then by bribing her that they might venture to Central Parks when the weather finally turned warmer. It would do them both good to spend more time together, especially away from here. To try and get back to some kind of normality, whatever that meant.

There you go again, sorting things out, she said to herself. Trying to fix things.

Terry had always called her the practical one, while he was more emotional – probably where Hayley got it from. He’d often go off in a huff if they had an argument – which only happened rarely, it had to be said – while she’d want to just fix things again, but finally resorting to tears when she got nowhere.

Not many got to see the softer side of Annette. Perhaps only Terry had really seen it.

Her eyes pricked again.

Try not to think about it. Think about something else, like the day you met – introduced by a mutual friend at Uni – or your wedding day, how handsome Terry had looked with his wavy brown hair, how beautiful he said you’d been in your dress.

Try not to think of that other day, try not to hear the phone’s shrill ring. And, of course, suddenly she was there again, picking it up, questioning the sense of the caller.

“No... That can’t be... You’ve got it wrong... He was only here half an hour ago...” As if that made a difference, as if you couldn’t be here one minute, gone the next. It was the way of the world. Life and...

He’d gone out for a walk to the shops, that’s all. He got so bored these days since he’d lost his job and couldn’t find another. He’d been a salesman, used to travelling, so being cooped up indoors for too long drove him crazy.

It had happened as he’d been about to cross the street to the newsagents, to pick up one of his monthly magazines. One of those writing ones, a life-long ambition (in a life which hadn’t been that long) he was hoping to turn into a profession now he had some time on his hands. Always the creative soul. Not that he’d done any actual writing yet, just read about it, just talked about it. Well, no writing that she knew about anyway... “I want to help bring in some more money,” he’d told her, the redundancy package he’d got being what it was... and almost exhausted. “Then you wouldn’t have to do so much of that book keeping stuff of an evening.”

She’d always been good with figures, always seen them in her head, been able to work out sums. Solving problems. But old school, jotting things down on paper – actual book keeping, in an actual book. In spite of the fact she knew how to use them, she had no time for computers and programs that would do this for her. Where was the fun in that? It was something... there was that word again... practical she could do.

But Terry had found a way to help with the money, hadn’t he? In a roundabout fashion. A life insurance policy that meant he had to be –

She’d pictured the scene in her mind so many times, like something out of a medical drama. Terry lifting his foot, about to take a step off the pavement, then screwing up his face, clutching at his head, doing a swan dive any premiere league footballer would be proud of.

The reality was almost definitely much, much worse. Terry had probably vomited – one of the early signs, apparently – maybe even fitted. Nobody would tell her. Not the owner of the paper shop, who’d eventually spotted Terry – how many people had simply walked by? – not the paramedics who were summoned. It was something she really didn’t need to know, but which she would often wonder about.

She’d always imagined they’d go together. Old farts on a beach, sitting on a bench, watching the tide roll in and get sucked back out again. And waiting, simply waiting. Or in bed, a kiss on the cheek, a switching out of the light. A closing of the eyes. Then both waking up in... wherever it was you ended up. If you ended up anywhere. In her fantasy, they’d both go to that place together. Heaven possibly, where they’d sit on clouds and drink champagne with the angels all day, who’d congratulate them on lives well led. Tell them what good people they’d been, how they’d helped and cared for others... Well, done what they could. They gave to charity when they could afford it...

Gave to charity shops. Annette’s eyes found the bags and boxes once more.

No, don’t think about that. Think about... Too late, her mind had spun on – fast forwarding that replay of the day it happened. The day. The only day... Now she was with the fat, balding doctor and he was telling her all this stuff about brain haemorrhages, preparing her, she guessed. Saying it was more common than she thought, that they accounted for 13% of all strokes (unlucky for some, eh?); that people like President Roosevelt and Richard Burton had died of the same thing (she remembered thinking What? And then what?); saying it could happen at any age, that any of us could go just like that. And he’d clicked his fingers, actually clicked them. She could still hear that noise, same as she could the telephone.

Click!

Oblivion. Nothing on the other side. There couldn’t be. If she wasn’t with him, hadn’t gone at the same time to that paradise land up above, then how could she believe in –

“Are you all right?” he asked her. The most stupid question in the history of stupid questions. How could she be all right? How could she ever be all right again? Yet she’d found herself nodding. The tears hadn’t come then; not yet.

Not even when she’d had to identify the body, been ushered inside that cold room which looked as if all the colour had been leeched from it. She walked stiffly, like a zombie. No, no zombies. There was no coming back from this; her husband wasn’t going to sit up and try to eat her brains. This was real life. Real death, too.

They’d opened that metal door, and she remembered thinking it was like some kind of huge filing cabinet for corpses. “Griffiths, Griffiths... give me a second, ah yes, here we are, under the G’s. As in G for Gone.”

Even as they pulled back that cloth covering his face, right up to the last second, she’d hoped they’d made some kind of mistake. That this was somebody else’s spouse, someone else’s problem to fix.

“Is this your husband, Mrs Griffiths?” the man had asked – she couldn’t even remember what that one looked like.

She’d wanted to shake her head. Of course this wasn’t Terry, because her husband was alive and well. She’d only seen him a couple of hours ago, called goodbye to him as he’d gone out through the front door – oh, how she wished she’d gone downstairs, left what she was doing (she couldn’t remember what it was now, nothing important, certainly not as important as seeing your husband alive for the last time, kissing him, holding him while he was still warm). Wished she’d rushed downstairs and begged him not to go: “What do you need that stupid magazine for anyway? I need you more.”

But it wasn’t the leaving that had done this, not the leaving of the house at any rate. Could have happened while he was sitting on the sofa. She couldn’t blame that; couldn’t blame anything. There was nothing to blame.

People just don’t die like this, she remembered thinking. They die in car accidents, of terminal illnesses that drag on for months, years even. They’re stabbed by muggers. Or lost at sea. But not this, she couldn’t get her head around this.

Again, she’d found herself nodding. It was him, even though it wasn’t. Even though the colour had drained from him, just as it had the room.

The rest had been a bit of a blur: being driven home, sitting with a neighbour who’d been dragged into this – old Mrs Bell, who’d rubbed Annette’s shoulders and said “There, there” at regular intervals; then Hayley arriving home, having walked with her friend and her mum, as per usual on Thursdays, Annette still not crying even as she had to break the news to her daughter about what had happened.

Next all the arrangements for the funeral, done on autopilot – the service itself at the local church, during which she remembered picturing God, white flowing beard like Father Christmas, hand curled into a gun shape and pointing, aiming at Terry, then thumb coming down like a hammer...

Going through the motions.

She remembered the snow on the ground, though. A watery sun straining to break through the clouds above, but offering no warmth even if it could. A handful of friends and relatives stood around the grave. And the coffin, so small she wondered how Terry could possibly be inside that box...

How his stuff could possibly be inside those in front of her now.

It was a couple of weeks after that, on Terry’s birthday (as opposed to his much more significant deathday), that she began to cry. Inevitable really; sooner or later something had to give. She’d waited for Hayley to go into a coma at last, after crying herself to sleep again. It had finally sunk in that Terry was never coming back, that she couldn’t fix things no matter how practical she was. And she’d wept all night, then been forced to put on the act for Hayley the next morning – everything’s okay, you can break down but not Mum – and so it had gone on for a month or more until she thought there were no tears left in her.

The pricking again; there were tears left. Perhaps it had still been too soon to clear all this stuff away. And she still had a few bits and bobs left in the room Terry liked to call his study – really it was the little bedroom. A room she hadn’t even dared enter until today.

No, the time was right. There were too many reminders, too many things to trip her up – making her more likely to cry in front of Hayley. Annette went back into Terry’s study, started to clear the last remnants of him from the room. Not in the spiritual sense, because she didn’t believe in all that; if his physical form was no longer here, that meant he wasn’t here; if he wasn’t around to touch, to hold, then how could she truly ‘feel’ him?

In the study, especially, there had been so many things associated with Terry. He’d spent so much time in here since they’d ‘let him go’ from work.

Was that what she was doing? Letting him go? Or trying to?

As she was flitting about, however, she caught the corner of the desk. There was a beeping noise, and she realised she’d knocked the mouse sitting on top of the mat. Suddenly Terry’s computer had sparked into life. Annette started, then frowned. It took her a moment to realise that the thing must have been on standby all this time, that Terry had never had a chance to switch it off. Why would he, when he was only intending to be a short while?

Annette couldn’t help herself, she sat down in the chair and gazed at the screen – wondering whether she might find something, the last thing he wrote perhaps, a story he might have been working on and never told her about, let alone showed her. But instead she found herself looking at a page on a website.

Terry’s page on a social networking site – something he’d set up when he decided to begin writing. “Says here it helps to have some kind of online presence,” Terry had told her, looking up from his magazine one day.

A photo of him taken on holiday several years ago – when Hayley was just a toddler – stared back at her. He looked so happy, so at peace.

Her eyes were misting again, but she fought it. In spite of herself, Annette took hold of the mouse, clicking the link that would take her to his wall. Perhaps he’d been on that before he –

The browser took her to the login page. The site had obviously logged Terry out after a certain amount of time. Annette struggled to remember his email and password, but it didn’t matter because the computer had remembered them. She logged in, navigating to his opening page, then clicked on his wall.

The saltwater was welling as she saw some of the messages, from well-wishers hoping Terry’d had a nice Christmas with his family, hoping he had a lovely birthday. Virtual friends from various parts of the globe, who didn’t know Terry wasn’t around anymore to read their posts.

She continued scrolling downwards, then stopped. There was the final message from Terry, left on the day... On the day, the only day.

It’s so cold and dark now. I don’t like it.

It had been at the beginning of winter that day, it was true. Temperatures were plummeting, the nights were drawing in. Several of Terry’s friends – he had thirty or so, she noted, though no family – had liked this comment, some had even agreed that they didn’t care for the new season very much either.

The only thing was that Terry had gone out for his final walk mid-morning. Okay, it hadn’t been bright sunlight, but you could hardly describe it as dark. Then Annette noticed the time, and a breath caught halfway up her throat.

The message had been left around midday, around the time she was identifying Terry in the morgue.

There was a pinging sound and Annette jumped in her seat, the breath suddenly shaking loose, but another catching again just as quickly. When she’d had a second or so to compose herself, Annette traced the source of the noise. The messages part of the taskbar had lit up, flashing excitedly, finally gaining someone’s attention now that she’d logged in.

Annette hovered over it with the cursor, half of her wanting to see, the other half terrified of what might be in there, lurking. A message from a secret lover, perhaps? No, Terry wasn’t like that; never had been. She could have put him in a room full of naked women and he’d just have tried to cover them up because he thought they were chilly.

So what...?

Annette could stand it no longer: she clicked on his messages. There were several, but not incoming as she might have thought. These were all in his outgoing folder. Who the hell had been using her husband’s... her – yes, say it – dead husband’s account? She’d get to the bottom of it, whatever happened. Personally see to it that they hurt as badly as she did right now.

They were messages from Terry, but then they would be if someone had hacked him. And they were to her account, the one he’d insisted on setting up for her so she could be his first friend on there (“It’ll be like a snowball effect, you’ll see...” not much of a snowball, thirty people). She clicked on the first, dated a day after he’d suffered the collapse:

Hello... Annie? Annie, sweetheart... Are you there? Please... I’m so, so scared.

She ground her teeth together, breathing in and out now through her nose. Tears were escaping, but they were tears of fury not sadness. At the person who’d done this, who was leaving such cruel messages – what, because they thought it was funny? Bloody sickos!

She forced herself to look at more:

Please, please Annie, talk to me. I need to hear your voice. I’m so alone...

Darlin’, where are you? I’m lost... I’m not sure what’s happening to me.

For the love of Christ, please say something! Answer me!

That last one sounded angry, as if he thought she was ignoring him. That was it, she was going to call the police, see what they had to say about –

Darlin’, it’s me... it’s really me... I don’t know what’s happened or why you won’t talk to me. But... Look, I can prove it. Remember the juggler. The one we saw on our first date, when we were walking through the city?

Annette’s blood ran cold. How could whoever this was know about that? Yet it was right there in front of her, in the final entry dated about a fortnight ago.

He was rubbish, remember? Dropped all his clubs and we laughed, so hard?

That was when we –

– kissed for the first time, while we were laughing, the message finished for her.

Annette swallowed hard, got up and backed away from the desk. No, it couldn’t be. Somebody was messing with her... But... well, they’d never told anyone that story. It was theirs, alone. That moment when they’d both first felt it.

Click!

Annette ran from the study, only just finding the toilet in time. Throwing up her lunch into the pan, then standing, stumbling into the bathroom and splashing her face with water.

She looked at herself in the mirror, dyed black strands of hair glued to her cheeks. Annette stood up stiffly, chin set firm. Her husband must have told someone, maybe when he’d had a few on one of his trips (though he’d always rung her, hadn’t he, every night, completely sober... He’d always found a way to get through to her, so... No... no, no, no, no, no). Annette marched back into the study, sat down again, then logged out of Terry’s account, before bringing up the page to log into hers. The information for that had been saved, too... Lucky for her Terry was in the habit of doing that. Lucky for the hacker, as well?

Annette got the same pinging noise when she visited her page. Her one friend – Terry – made her late husband’s collection look vast by comparison.

She found the last message he’d left and opened it, hitting REPLY.

I don’t know who this is, she typed, but I’m going to find out. You’re evil and I’m going to make sure you pay for what you’ve done.

When she logged out again, her hands were shaking. She powered down the computer, gathered together the rest of Terry’s belongings, and put them in the boxes and bags. Annette took them downstairs one at a time, placing them in the garage for now.

She said nothing to Hayley when she collected her from school, just nodded and murmured “A-huh” at the appropriate moments as the seven-year-old talked and talked about her day. Annette did the same as they had dinner that night, just stared into space as Hayley went on and on about some game they’d played in one of her classes.

“And then Bobby Townsend said this... And then Kerry Wolter did that...” Annette let it all wash over her; she was still back in the study, with the computer.

She waited until Hayley was in bed, until the girl was asleep, then she crept into the study and powered up the machine on the desk. Her heart was racing, she could feel it pounding in her chest.

There was a reply to her message. What now, an apology? Whoever it was could stick it up their-

Annette stared at the message back from ‘Terry’.

Sweetheart, it *really* is me, it began. I don’t know how or why, but I’m able to talk to you this way. It’s been very... confusing. It’s only the thought of you maybe replying that’s kept me going...

Annette huffed, but read on.

I know what you’re thinking, how do you *know* it’s really me? Okay, if the juggler didn’t prove it, how about this...

Annette’s mouth fell open, her jaw locking. No, no... She rose again, breathing quickly in and out. How? How could this person know that? Their secret that they’d kept all these years? That they’d definitely not told anyone... In her imagination now, it was the bald, overweight doctor delivering the news to her, rambling on and on, occasionally mentioning the word ectopic: “It’s more common than you think, especially during the early stages... Could happen to anyone, happened to people like Mary Shelley, Marylyn Monroe, Bess Truman and –”

There was another pinging sound. A live chat box had just appeared in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. Terry wanted to talk to her.

Annette bit her lip, so hard she thought she would make it bleed. This couldn’t be happening. This was crazy. She was going mad. No, how could she be? She was too damned rational for that. The only logical answer was that Terry had found a way again... Perhaps in this day and age, where technology was worshipped and people turned their backs on religion and the church (the same as she had done), it was the only way to come back. If you could chat to someone on the other side of the planet like this, then why not the other side?

And, she reasoned, weren’t human beings electrical by nature? Neurons were just electrical cells transmitting information, weren’t they? Thoughts and sensations... A computer was a kind of electrical brain, so...

Maybe, just maybe, there was a ghost in this machine.

Slowly, she sat back down, opened the chat box, and said hello to her dead husband.

~*~

Over the course of the next few months, over the next couple of years, they ‘talked’ as often as they could, sometimes chatting all night, just like they used to do when they first got together. This was a strange continuation of their union, and she’d wondered all the time whether it was a healthy one (as well as still questioning her sanity during her more wobbly moments), but it sort of worked. And if this was the only way to have Terry back... There was still that closeness, they’d still argue on occasion and he’d go quiet... Then she’d return to the computer after the flood banks had broken, wanting to fix things, wanting him to talk again – in a weird reversal of when he’d first appeared on here. And suddenly he’d be back.

Necessity had transformed him into the writer he’d so longed to be, only it was poetry that turned out to be his forte. He’d often leave love poems for Annette in her messages folder, there for her to find when she logged back on; forcing the pricking at the corners of her eyes for a different reason.

She’d share everything, just as before. Annette told him about her work – she’d begun advertising in the local paper again, taking on clients. She’d repeat – often parrot-fashion – what Hayley had told her about her day, too. Post photos and video clips so he could see how much his princess was growing, beginning with that trip she’d promised the girl to Central Parks.

Every now and again, Terry would also go quiet when she did this. But she knew why: because he couldn’t be with them both. Because he couldn’t give them hugs; his body six feet under in the cemetery. It might have been why he’d made Annette promise not to tell Hayley.

>She can’t know about any of this, he’d typed. I’m not sure she can handle it...

He was probably right.

Annette had asked him quite a few times to describe what it was like where he was, what might be waiting for her when she passed over.

>It’s difficult to explain, Terry said once. It’s like being in some kind of limbo. In a sort of fog or something. A thick mist. It’s all still so confusing... But I don’t think this is normal, sweetheart; what’s happened to me. I don’t think this happens to everyone, y’know?

Annette nodded, not really understanding at all.

But as much as they tried to fool themselves into thinking things were okay, there was something missing. And the more time that passed the more that became apparent.

Sooner or later, something had to give.

~*~

November 20th – almost three years after Terry’s passing.

Annette sat back down at the desk, as she had done every night for two weeks, checking to see if he’d been ‘online’.

Nothing again.

There’d been nothing since that last message, short and to the point:

I know, it had said.

Annette bit her lip again, remembering. It had been ironic, because she’d had to build herself up to sitting down that day. Hadn’t known quite how to broach the subject to Terry. Turned out there was no need. He was already well aware of James, of how when she’d met her latest client – a freelance photographer, weddings, christenings, proms that kind of thing – there had been that spark. The spark. Terry already knew about how, after they’d met up for coffee those few times, that spark had turned into a crackle, then a bolt of lightning that hit her and left her head spinning. Sometimes, although she’d never experienced it herself – she and Terry had been friends first, then the rest had followed later – but just sometimes it could happen like that.

Click!

That was it, they’d clicked. It could happen to anyone at any time. Anthony and Cleopatra, Jackie and John F, William and Kate... She’d had no control over it, and she’d fought it. Oh, how she’d tried to fight! But he was in her thoughts all the time; she’d be doing the washing or hoovering, and he’d just pop up. That smiling face, silvery-blond hair.

Plus it was mutual; he’d even asked if he could take her photograph on one occasion. Said she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on. It sounded like a cheesy pick-up line, but somehow Annette knew that James meant it.

It was when things started to get too serious, when they’d almost kissed, that she’d had to stop seeing him socially.

“It’s Terry,” she’d said, and he’d nodded. Hadn’t tried to force the issue. James knew she was a widow, knew that he was competing with her late husband’s memory. But that was just it; he wasn’t simply competing with a memory. He was competing with Terry himself.

Ashamed, and knowing she’d never kept a thing from Terry the whole of their marriage, she realised she had to tell him. But how? It would break his heart... figuratively speaking.

All that agonising, and when she’d finally plucked up enough courage, Terry had said those two short words:

I know.

How, was anyone’s guess; they hadn’t even talked yet or anything. Nevertheless, there could be no other interpretation of it. Terry knew everything. Deep down, Annette felt that he did. And now he was gone, had disappeared – in spite of her frantic messages to him, trying to fix things:

Can’t we talk about this, sweetheart? Please? Why won’t you answer me?

As she sat down again that unseasonably warm November morning, she was expecting much of the same. A blank message box, the light on live chat dull rather than bright. But, just as she was about to get up and make herself a cup of tea, there was a pinging sound.

“Terry!” she said, hardly able to keep the joy from her voice – and not wanting to anyway. Then she typed the same thing into the bottom right hand box of the page.

>Yes, it’s me, he gave as a reply. I’m sorry.

>Sorry? What have you got to be sorry about? It’s me who should be apologising, Annette typed, although her lips moved as she did so.

>I’ve been off, sulking. You know me. It was just the thought of... well, you know...

>Look, nothing happened. Terry I love *you*.

>And you love him as well.

>No, I –

>Yes... but Annie, it’s okay. I’ve had a lot of time to think, and things have got a lot clearer for me. The fog’s lifting.

>I don’t know what you mean.

Annette bit down on her lip, hard, after saying the words out loud this time.

>While we’re doing this, neither of us can move on. And we need to, we *have* to, sweetheart – as much as it hurts. He can give you what I can’t anymore. As much as I’d like to, as much as I’d give anything in the world to be able to.

She could feel the pricking at the corners of her eyes again.

>He’s a good man. I’ve seen it... seen so much, you wouldn’t believe it. You’ll be happy, he’ll be a good dad to Hayley. You’re going to have a long, long time together.

There was a pause and then Terry typed: Old farts on a beach.

Was he just guessing that, or... I’ve seen it; I’ve seen so much. She could have sworn she’d heard the words then. The tears were breaking free now again, she couldn’t hold them back – just like the night of Terry’s birthday, and so many after that until he came back to her.

>Terry, no...

>Yes, darlin’. It has to be like this. I’m going travelling, just like I used to.

Annette could picture his face, see him speaking the words back to her. It was almost, for a fraction of a second, as if he was there in the room with her.

>But... will I ever see – She broke off then rephrased the question: Will I ever hear from you again?

There was another pause.

>Perhaps, someday. I’ll always be around, though. Now, I really have to go.

At that moment Annette could feel his presence, his hands on her shoulders – her imagination, she realised, but it didn’t stop it from feeling real.

“Terry...” she said one last time, not even bothering to type anymore. The words came up on the screen from him, which she didn’t read until later on, the tears coming too strong to even see. But she heard them as well, a whisper in her ear.

“Goodbye my love. And remember,” said Terry, before vanishing again, just as swiftly as he did the first time:

“Life is sweet,” he told her. “Life is sweet.”

Starcross

Liz Williams

They said it would never work and that I was quite mad. As a spur to action this naturally caused me to redouble my efforts and prove everyone wrong – a course of behaviour which caused my dear wife to purse her lips and frown for a month whenever she looked in my direction.

“My dear, let me try to explain it to you. It’s really very simple.” I pushed a sheaf of diagrams across the breakfast table. “A pneumatic tube is laid between the rails, here, with a piston running in it. That is suspended from the train, through a sealable slot in the top of the tube. One might also have the whole tunnel as the pneumatic tube, with the car being the piston with a seal to the walls.”

“Isambard, I –”

“By way of placing stationary pumping engines along the route, so, air is exhausted from the tube, which leaves a partial vacuum here in advance of the piston or car, and air is admitted to the tube behind the piston or car so that atmospheric pressure propels the train. You see?”

She regarded me coldly. “I must say, Mr Brunel, of all the crackpot schemes you’ve devised over the course of your professional life, this one strikes me as the most crazed.”

I was, I confess, a touch hurt by this. “But my dear - it is not as though this is an original notion. The railway at Dalkey is already in existence, and working. I shall be venturing across to Ireland to view it in operation. Moreover, how you can express such scepticism in the wake of all that I have achieved –”

“Well,” Mary remarked, beginning to clear away the breakfast dishes, “All I can say is that curiosities seem to follow you about like little sheep. Even your love of Devon was occasioned by the bizarre, and that’s why you’re so keen on this railway.”

I was silent: regrettably, there was some truth in this accusation. Whilst undertaking a conjuring trick on behalf of my children some years previously, a half sovereign had become lodged in my throat, threatening to choke me, and despite my cunning invention of a machine to dislodge it, this had failed. Eventually an old friend who was a doctor suggested that I simply be strapped to a board and turned upside down, and the coin sprang free. I had gone to Teignmouth to recover and the tranquil beauties of the Devonian countryside, its red cliffs and blue estuaries, had made a profound effect upon me. Perhaps there was some truth in the claim that this was why I wished to be so involved in its railways, but it was true, too, that they had simply asked me. For, modesty apart, I am after all the nation’s foremost engineer.

When Mary had bustled out of the room, I began to study the plans set out across the breakfast table once more and soon was lost in them. I noticed some small changes, alterations that could profitably be made to the original design, and I found that I was consumed with a sensation familiar to me, a great enthusiasm, the fire of creation which, no doubt, artists must also feel. Forgetting Mary’s pooh-poohing, I set to work.

~*~

A month later, and I stood at Starcross. The village perches on the lip of the estuary, looking out over the broad blue expanse of the river Exe. This is a country of fishermen and farmers, a fertile land until one finds oneself striding up onto the harsh lands of Dartmoor. But our concerns lay along the coast.

“You might think, sir, that it looks all calm and peaceful now. Like a millpond, it is, but you just wait – in winter, when we have the gales, you’ll see all that fine calm water whipped up into a frenzy of storm. Any track you put here will need a train with fins,” Mr Potts said to me, as we surveyed the terrain from the summit of the cliff.

This gave me momentary food for thought – an underwater train, indeed! – but I rallied.

“That is why, Mr Potts, anything we build must pass through the shelter of the cliff itself.”

“Very wise, Mr Brunel, but of course we all know what you are about. I’ve seen three of your bridges and marvellous constructions they are.”

“Thank you. Most kind. You see, Gooch is of the opinion that an ordinary locomotive will work as well, and be of less cost, but I have a great reservation about the grades. I visited Dalkey a week ago and saw the system there.”

“And were you impressed?”

“Most favourably so.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “It is time to get to work, Mr Potts. We have the spring and summer at our disposal, so let us make the most of them.”

~*~

And so we did. By the following September, the tunnel had been run through the cliff and we had the start of a working atmospheric railway. It was, to my chagrin, already clear that the new railway would be significantly more expensive than its conventional alternative: nearly twice the cost to run. The engines would have to pump longer than expected, and this increased the amount estimated. We forged ahead nonetheless and I was, naturally, one of the first to try the new system. As we hurtled through the darkness underneath the cliff, I was cautiously pleased.

It was only on the second trial run that the incident occurred. For some reason, the pumping mechanism failed as we were halfway through the tunnel, leaving us stranded beneath the cliff. We sat for a moment in a kind of ticking silence.

“Hmmm!” Gooch remarked. “Something has gone awry.”

“Rather obviously!” I rose and walked the length of the carriage. “We will have to sit here until they get the pump working again – it is probably that which has failed. Never mind, it is all a question of experiment and I like to think that no time is ever wasted. Do you think –” I turned, to find that Gooch had vanished. His seat was quite empty. I gaped at it. Gooch was not forthcoming. In his place, however, was a man I did not know: a curly haired man with a pointed beard and dark eyes, his face pale above a short lacy ruff.

“Who the Devil are you, sir?” I demanded. “And what are you doing on my train?”

“I might ask the same of you!” he retorted. “And what manner of contraption is this? Good God!” He was staring past my left shoulder. I turned, to see a howling, contorted countenance behind me, framed in a wild mass of hair and beard.

“What the –” I began to say, but the train gave a sudden jolt and began to move again. Both my companions were gone and there was Gooch, poring over a diagram.

“…impossible to read in this light,” he was saying.

I sank into my seat. If I told him of my experience, he would consider me quite mad. While I was debating whether to risk it, a faint glow of light appeared at the end of the tunnel and we were hurtling out into the September sunshine.

I did not think I had imagined the episode, but I was at a loss to explain it otherwise. A kind of waking dream? A vision? I’d never been prone to such. But the howling visage, in particular, had unnerved me, and that night, I woke with a start to find myself drenched in a clammy sweat. There had been a dream – but I could not remember.

Next day, we tested the railway again and this time Gooch did not accompany me, being on an errand at the pump station. I was not disappointed: this time, we would see what occurred. This time, there was no hitch: the train did not stop, but as we entered the tunnel I saw, with horror, that the maniacal face was back, hovering in a silent scream at the far end of the carriage. As the train rushed onwards, the face shot towards me as if it had been fired from a cannon and I found myself bowled onto the carriage floor and sprawling. The creature was above me, it raised a club made of a bone and was about to bring it down when a woman wearing a long pale gown flashed past it. The face disappeared. I had a brief glimpse of the man in the ruff, but then he was no longer there and we were out of the tunnel.

Gathering my courage, I left the train at the platform and announced that I would be heading into the tunnel itself to check some measurements. Then I walked back along the track. I took a lamp and a shovel with me – I had not liked the look of that club – and if anyone thought this to be strange, they did not say so. But I had no reason to use the shovel, at least. The tunnel was dark and quiet, smelling strongly of earth and a little of the sea. I walked its length and then, when nothing had happened, I turned from one circle of light back into its depths and walked it again. I saw nothing except roots and the occasional worm. I concluded that the experience of the train, perhaps its speed, had caused some form of vision in me. Maybe my body or my mind had been affected by the experience of nearly choking, those few years before. Turning over these thoughts in my mind, I hastened back to the platform, where the train was once again due to enter the tunnel and begin its return run.

I saw nothing – at least, until the carriages once more slowed to a halt. The same fault as before had manifested. Anxiously, I peered down the carriage: no one was visible. But then – a sudden crack, a terrible pain, a shimmer of unearthly light, and I was falling, down into the black.

~*~

I blinked. The light was blinding, sun pouring in through the glass windows and warming my skin. I was lying on the floor of the pumping station with Gooch and the others gathered around me.

“What… happened?”

“Sir, we do not know. The train emerged from the tunnel and we found you like this – you were quite insensible. We tried to rouse you, but could not.”

“I think I must be unwell,” I said. “For a little time now, I’ve been having – visions.”

Gooch looked baffled, as well he might. “Visions?”

“Yes.” Briefly, I explained. I saw a look pass between them and I knew what it meant. “I think it would be advisable to call for a medic,” I said.

The doctor, who was of the bluff country sort, said that I had doubtless been working too hard and should rest. I did so, with reluctance, spending a tedious day in bed with the newspapers. At three o clock I was greatly cheered to see Gooch coming up to the house, but when he entered my room, he was utterly white in the face.

“What is it, man?” I forgot I was supposed to be ill and sprang to my feet.

“Those – things you said you saw, Sir. I’ve seen them, too.”

“Good God!”

Gooch, normally a man of stern nerves, was now pale and shaking. He collapsed into an armchair and accepted the cup of tea that I pressed into his hand.

“I saw – a woman, all dressed in white. And someone was chasing her down the carriage. I have never seen such a thing before, I am quite undone.”

“There has to be an explanation,” I said. “Perhaps some compression of the air? The speed?”

“If it is the speed,” Gooch said, recovering somewhat, “then why are ordinary trains not filled with apparitions?”

“A good question.” I made up my mind. “Gooch, come with me. I’m going down to the pumping station.”

I dressed hastily while Gooch drank the rest of his tea, then we set off. I issued instructions to the station personnel, then told Gooch to supervise.

“Where will you be?”

“On the train.”

He blanched. “Are you certain?”

“I will not risk another person. I must determine the cause of all this. I cannot have passengers subjected to apparitions and spectres.”

“If you are sure –” but I did not think he was entirely unhappy at being left behind.

I took the shovel with me, and this time I took care to stand with my back to the carriage wall. The train set off once more, and once more jerked to a standstill: on this occasion, deliberately. They were there again and the howling man raced towards me. I raised the shovel, but as I swung it in grim determination, a single sharp point appeared through the madman’s body and he vanished. The man with the ruff stood behind, holding a rapier.

“I am much indebted to you, sir!” I said. “Who are you?”

“My name? Francis Drake. I confess I am surprised that you do not know me.”

“Sir,” I said, “I do. Your name has been a legend in the south west for over two hundred years.”

His eyebrows went up. “You are suggesting, sir, that I am dead.”

“I fear that in my day and age, you are.”

He gave a sigh. “To be frank, I had thought as such. It has often seemed to me that the land has been changing around me, in ways which I cannot fully apprehend. You may not know that in life I was magician as much as sailor and courtier. I saw much of this manner of happening in those days – but the conjuration of spirits has always been a chancy art.”

“Do you think that this is what I have done? I am an engineer, not a magic worker.”

Drake frowned. “I don’t know what that word means. Did you conjure me? And the others – that man I ran through I have seen before, now I come to think of it. Someone from the far past. Is it possible for a ghost to be driven mad, I wonder?”

“Perhaps. In answer to your question, no, this was not a deliberate conjuration. It was an accident.”

His frown deepened. “It seemed to me that I was walking along the shore, that it was a clear afternoon in spring. And that all of an instant I felt a great tearing, grasping sensation as though someone had reached out a giant hand and pulled me through – into this most curious place.” He was looking around the carriage now. “It is a little like a ship’ cabin, but…”

A suspicion which I had been entertaining was now beginning to be confirmed.

“Sir,” I said, “Tell me more about the sensation which brought you here. Was it like a wind, or -?”

“Perhaps more akin to a whirlpool, in which one is sucked downwards. Only this was sideways.”

“I see.” I bowed. “I am now going to make this – craft – go forwards once more. I have a notion and I would put it into practice.” I pulled the cord to which we had attached a large bell: once Gooch heard it, at the other end of the tunnel, he would start the carriage moving once more. With a now-familiar jolt, the train began to move and Drake, with a startled cry, was gone.

~*~

“It seems to me,” I said to Gooch, “that the process of atmospherics has, most inadvertently, acted as a kind of suction device for spirits, bringing the shades of the departed forwards into the present. The tunnel is not, in itself, haunted, but our device has caused it to become so.”

“A day ago I would have said you had gone mad,” Gooch remarked. “But now –”

“Quite.”

If there was some way of reversing the process – the way in which the vacuum was created, perhaps… If we had sucked the spirits into our world, we needed some way of propelling them back again. I needed to invent a device…

~*~

A week later, we stood at the mouth of the tunnel once more. The device had been created at the pumping station, with an amplificatory engine mounted on the train itself. The idea was to create a kind of reverse vacuum: opening up a portal in whichever world the spirits resided, to propel them back to it once more. Gooch and I would work the device on the train as we travelled through the tunnel under atmospheric pressure. I did not know if it would work but I had hope: and not just for my own self, for the safety and peace of mind of future passengers, but also for the spirits themselves. I had a duty to them, it seemed to me.

Halfway through the tunnel, I pulled the cord that set the machine in motion: it was like a great fan, reversed, a moving cylinder. It whirred into life just as the first spirit, the woman in the pale gown, shot through the end of the carriage – and vanished into vapour. The howling ancient was, to my considerable relief, next. Then Drake, who had just enough time to glance about him, remarking “Ah!” before he, too, was whirled into the dark. More followed, looking to be farmers, or labourers, including a man with a dreadful wound along his face. I could only conclude that these were all people who had died by violence, or who, like Drake, had played an important role in the life of this old coast. When the final spectre had disappeared, I turned to Gooch.

“I think, my friend,” I said, “that we can consider this a job well done.”

“I think we may,” he replied, “And yet –” He hesitated.

“And yet?”

“Shouldn’t we have reached the end of the tunnel by now?”

I rushed to the window of the carriage and looked out. Instead of the garnet soil and shadows, the approaching estuary, there was an expanse of darkness, roiling with flickering lights. Great skeins of stars reached beneath us, sparkling like fire.

“Good Lord,” said Gooch, “Where are we?”

For the train was travelling onwards, on invisible rails. In endeavouring to return the spirits, I had succeeded in propelling us through that selfsame gap.

“I do not know,” I said. But already my mind was working furiously, calculating a way to return us to Starcross, and the tunnel’s end.

Forward and Back, Change Places

Marion Pitman

Paul walked from the tube station through the north London dusk, climbed the stone steps, and looked around as he entered the hall. He hadn’t been here for years, not since he’d moved south of the river, but tonight a particularly good ceilidh band was playing, and he felt the urge to dance.

The band was setting up; already quite a few people were sitting about the room and chatting. Paul saw a few vaguely familiar faces, but no one he knew well enough to go and talk to. He put his coat down on a seat, and went to get a beer.

He sat out the first two dances, but then got up his nerve to ask a middle-aged woman he recognised from somewhere; after that he found it easier, and since there was as usual a shortage of men, he found a partner for every dance before the interval.

The bar was packed in the break, so Paul went into the side room where they served tea and cake and sandwiches. This was emptier, but there were no free tables, so he took his tea and fruitcake to a corner table where a plump, dark man was sitting alone.

“Excuse me, do you mind if I sit here?”

“Go ahead!” The dark man beamed. Paul wondered if he were looking for someone to talk to, and hoped he wasn’t a bore; Paul wasn’t good at getting away from bores. He sat down, stirred his tea, although he didn’t take sugar, and broke a piece off his cake.

The dark man said, “Haven’t seen you here before, have I?”

“No, I don’t get up here often.”

“Come far?”

“Not too far. Takes me an hour or so.” Warily not saying where he lived, until he knew whether the other were a bore or not.

“Ah! I live quite close. Good band, aren’t they?”

“Very good. Came to hear them, really. Very good to dance to.”

“I’m Gilbert.”

He held out his hand, and Paul felt obliged to take it, saying, “Paul.”

However, the subsequent conversation was quite pleasant, and Gilbert did not reveal any particular obsession or monotony of thought. Paul finished his tea and cake, and stood up.

Gilbert said, “Enjoy the second half,” as though he were not staying, and Paul went back into the hall.

She must have come in during the interval. She was already whirling round in a Cumberland Square Eight when he saw her – tall, slim, with long, red hair – he only caught a glimpse of her face, but it did something to him. He sat down, feeling a little dizzy. He hadn’t felt like that about anyone since he was fourteen. He tried to pull himself together. The dance finished; she walked off with a group of people, and while he was still wondering if he dared go and ask her to dance, she stood up again, with a tall fair-haired man in a blue shirt.

Paul was still staring at that end of the room when a voice said, “Are you doing this one?” and he turned and saw one of the women he’d danced with earlier. He stood up – he wasn’t sure what they danced, but it was one he knew, and he didn’t make any major mistakes. By the time it finished, he’d decided he must get a grip. He would try to speak to the red-haired woman, but it would be ridiculous not to dance as much as possible now he’d come all this way. No doubt once he spoke to her she would turn out to be quite ordinary.

He determined to enjoy the rest of the evening, and succeeded pretty well; he glimpsed her often, but she was always in another set; he thought he might catch her up in a circle dance where the women changed partners, but she was still two couples away when the music ended. At the end of the evening they were in the same set for Drops of Brandy, and he thought he must get to swing her by the arm at least once; but some other couple went wrong, and suddenly she was moving away from him again.

At the end, someone spoke to him, and when he turned around again she was nowhere to be seen.

Oh well, he sighed, that was that. He put on his coat and made for the bus stop, expecting to forget the whole thing.

~*~

He didn’t forget, though. The thought of the woman with red hair kept coming back to him, and the magical feeling he’d had at the sight of her. No matter how he told himself she would be quite ordinary if he spoke to her, she stayed in his mind, until there was nothing for him to do but go back to the next month’s ceilidh, and hope that she might be there. If he did that, he would have done all he could; but he must do that.

~*~

He was rather later this time; the dancing had already started, and he saw her on the far side of the hall, partnering the tall fair man again. If she had a boyfriend there was really no point in speaking to her at all. Paul found a seat and took off his coat; at the end of that dance he tried to work up the courage simply to walk across the room, and stand near her, and perhaps start a conversation with someone in the same group, but his heart was pounding ridiculously, and by the time he was halfway there they were making up sets for the next dance.

It went on like that through the first half; between dances he would work his way towards her, and then she would move off suddenly, or he would get in a conversation and not know how to end it; somehow he was again never in the same set, except once, in a longways dance, where he followed her, at five couples distance, from one end to the other, and the dance ended before she and her partner turned and came back. It was maddening, and the more it happened, the worse were his nerves. At the interval he thought he might find her in the bar, but she wasn’t there. He looked into the tea room – she was sitting at the far side, at a table with four other people, all talking animatedly. Paul sighed, bought a cup of tea, and saw Gilbert, once more sitting on his own.

Gilbert greeted Paul cheerfully, and they chatted about the band, and the weather. Gilbert said, “Wasn’t expecting to see you here again.”

“Oh well, it was good last time, and there’s not much in the way of dancing near me. It’s only about half an hour on the tube, nothing really.” That was only half the journey, but he didn’t want it to sound as if he’d made an enormous effort.

“Ah,” said Gilbert, “that’s good. Maybe you’ll get into the habit.”

Paul smiled; “Maybe I shall.”

“You’re on your own, are you?”

“What? Yes, I came on my own.”

“No, I mean, you live on your own? You’re not married?”

“Er, no.” Paul was a bit taken aback. He’s not making a pass, is he? Or looking for a flat share?

“Sorry, perhaps that sounded a bit rude. I’m just interested. Interested in people, you know.”

“Oh, right. No, I’m not married. Plenty of time for that.”

“Oh, of course.”

Was it his imagination, or did Gilbert look at him a bit oddly? No, imagination, must be.

“Divorced, me. Didn’t work out. Mind you, I’d marry again. Not easy to find the right woman.”

“No, no, it’s not, is it?” Paul really didn’t want to talk about women, or his love life, or lack thereof; he finished his tea, and murmured something about going to the gents.

He saw Gilbert a couple of times in the second half, not dancing, but sitting and watching the dancers, a bit sadly, perhaps, but Paul really didn’t feel he was under any obligation to go and sit with him. He had plenty of partners – he was a good dancer, though he would blush to say so – and the enjoyment of dancing took over even from the anxious watching for the red-haired woman. His heart sank absurdly, though, when he finished a final polka with a girl from Ealing, and realised that the red-haired woman, the fair man, and the rest of the people they’d been with had all gone.

He wandered over to fetch his coat, feeling near to tears. Ridiculous, he said to himself, when he’d never even seen the woman up close, and she appeared to be spoken for anyway. She was a good dancer, true; but the room was full of tolerably good dancers. He put his coat on, and went with dragging footsteps to the door. As he went out he realised Gilbert was beside him.

“You okay? You look a bit sick.”

“I’m fine. Just tired. Miserable weather for June, isn’t it?”

“Oh well. Not so bad. Paul, I know this is none of my business, but I couldn’t help noticing. At tea time, you kept looking at the table in the corner. Is there… I mean, have you got a problem with somebody?”

“What? Oh – no, not really. I just... There was someone there I thought I knew, that’s all.”

“Ah?”

Having given himself this lead in, he thought he might go on – there was always a chance Gilbert might know who she was. “The girl with the long red hair. I’ve got a feeling I’ve seen her somewhere before, but I can’t think where. You don’t know her, I suppose?”

“Er – long red hair –? Um. No, I’m afraid not. Well, see you next month?”

“Uh. Maybe.”

Gilbert turned aside at a bus stop, and Paul went on to the tube station, his mind in a pitiable state.

~*~

The next month seemed to drag on for years. Work was unexciting, and Paul could find very little to do in his spare time. He watched a lot of television. He wondered if it were worth going up to the hall to other events, in case she went to something else there. But what? He went to a dance one Thursday, but she wasn’t there. Being in the same building without her presence just made the misery worse. It was all so pointless, he told himself; but that didn’t make any difference. Sometimes he had a positive day, when he assured himself that next month she would be there, and he would speak to her – somehow he would make the opportunity, and he wouldn’t dance with anyone until he’d done it. If he made sure of where she was sitting, and stationed himself near there, sooner or later, surely, there would be a chance to smile and say, “Hello. I’ve seen you here before,” or something, something, however naff... But other times he was sure she wouldn’t be there again, or if he spoke to her she would stare at him and turn away... He was, let’s face it, short and slight and nondescript, he thought. He rather imagined people thought of him as “that dreadful weedy little man”, though he had no evidence that they did.

Then something a colleague said at work gave him another dreadful thought – would she think he was stalking her, if he hung about until he had a chance to speak? Was he, in fact, a stalker? Was that what it meant – this obsession with someone you didn’t know? Obsession, infatuation – it was only love at first sight if you both felt it... Oh God. Perhaps he’d better not go to the next ceilidh at all...

When it came, though, he couldn’t face the thought of not going. He would go, he would speak to her, and then he would leave – or at least go to the bar, and keep out of her way.

He arrived early, in fact far too early, and had to go and sit in the bar as nothing else was open. As he glumly started a pint of beer, someone sat down opposite him, and he looked up to see Gilbert’s round, pink, amiable face.

“Hello Paul. You’re early.”

“Yes, I allowed far too much time for the journey. Thought it would be busy, the weather’s so fine. Very hot on the tube.”

“Must be.”

Gilbert seemed distracted; Paul said, “So how are you? Everything okay?”

“Oh yes. Well...” Gilbert fiddled with a beer mat before saying, “Paul. Do you believe in ghosts?”

“What? Uh, no, I don’t think so. Why?”

“It can be a problem, you know. People who come back, and .. who aren’t there.”

“I suppose it could be. But I can’t say I believe in it, you know.”

“No. No, I suppose not. I shan’t trouble you, then. Excuse me – I have to go and speak to someone...”

He wandered off, and Paul sat frowning into his beer. Odd subject to bring up. Still, when he’d finished this pint the hall should be open.

She wasn’t there at the start, and Paul had a bad half hour thinking she wasn’t coming; but at the end of a set of Nottingham Swing he saw a flurry of people in the doorway, and among them an unmistakable figure and a glow of red hair. As he chatted politely to his erstwhile partner, he watched out of the corner of his eye and marked where she put her handbag down. When the next dance started, he went out to the gents, and when he came back he walked – he hoped unobtrusively – round the room, and sat down a yard or two from her bag. She didn’t sit down between that dance and the next, but at the end of the second she walked straight past him, and looked at him, and smiled. He smiled back, but was quite unable to speak. She picked up her handbag and went out of the hall.

She hadn’t returned when the interval started. Paul thought of simply sitting there, stubbornly, waiting for her, but then Gilbert came by, and said, “Cup of tea?”, and Paul couldn’t think of an excuse not to go.

He hunched miserably over his tea, and Gilbert said cautiously, “Paul? There is something wrong, isn’t there?”

“Um. Well, yes. But it’s silly.”

“I won’t laugh.”

“It’s just that I’m... infatuated with this woman. I don’t even know her, I haven’t spoken to her. It’s silly. I’ll get over it. It’s just – it’s nothing.”

“Ah. I see. Is it, by any chance, the red-haired woman you mentioned last time?”

“Well. Yes. Yes, it is. She’s very attractive, isn’t she? But she seems to have a boyfriend, so there’s not much I can do anyway.”

“Ah. No. No, I imagine not. Look, Paul, now don’t take this the wrong way, but I... well, I haven’t actually seen this woman you’re talking about.”

“Oh! Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you said you saw her last month – when I asked if you knew who she was.”

“Well. No. That’s the thing –”

Paul had turned, and was looking round the room. “Look,” he said, “she’s just over there, by the door, talking to that woman with the white hair and the peasant blouse –” he turned back, and saw Gilbert, not looking towards the door, but gazing rather worriedly at Paul.

“What?”

“Paul. There’s no one there.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There is a woman with white hair, just going out of the door. She’s on her own.”

“Don’t be ridiculous –” he turned again, and there was no one in the doorway. “She’s gone back to the hall. She was there a minute ago.”

“Paul. You have to believe me. Look, there are... people, who... well, who aren’t really there, but who make you believe they are... they do it to mess with your head. You must believe me, Paul; really, you must.”

“What? What do you mean, not really there? What are you talking about?”

“Sometimes they’re people who – well, who were alive, and when they’re… not, they can’t leave. They can’t go from the place where they were alive.”

Paul was staring at him; “You’re telling me she’s a ghost?”

“For want of a better word –”

“You’re mad. No, sorry, but look, I’ve seen her dancing. I mean, the people she’s dancing with must be able to see her – they’d notice, you know? She can’t just be visible to me.”

“Well, maybe, maybe not. I can’t say. But look, just think about the possibility. I mean, listen, the way she’s, mm, enthralled you – is that natural? Has that ever happened before?”

“Uh. Not as such, no. But...” It was crazy. She’d walked by him. He’d felt the air move as she went by. Hadn’t he? On the other hand, she was somehow always on the other side of the room... Oh no, absurd. “Look, are you sure? I mean, maybe you’ve just missed seeing her –”

“Really. I know about these things. You should be careful. As I said, they mess with your head. They like to upset you. Cause you grief. You must be careful.” Gilbert was gazing at him, obviously desperately concerned.

Paul shook his head, sat back. “I don’t know,” he said, “I really don’t know. I honestly can’t believe what you’re saying, but... look, let me think about it.”

“Of course. But just do me a favour: don’t make any more attempts to speak to her, to get closer to her. It could be very dangerous.”

“Dangerous?”

“You see, sometimes the reason these people stay around, is because they like to play with people. Manipulate them. They can’t leave anything alone. If you get close to them, get involved, let them influence you – it won’t end happily, I promise.”

Paul shook his head again. “I don’t know. I – okay, okay, I’ll keep away from her for the time being,” thinking, fat chance of anything else. Suddenly he couldn’t bear Gilbert looking concernedly at him any longer; he got up, and went towards the hall. The red-haired girl and the fair man were leaving. He stared as they went out of the door, and realised they were putting up umbrellas; it had started to rain. Surely ghosts didn’t need umbrellas? Gilbert was still looking at Paul, still worried.

Paul took a deep breath, said nothing, and went into the hall for his waterproof.

Gilbert was waiting at the outer door; they walked in silence to the bus stop. As they parted, Gilbert said, “Just think of what I’ve said. Be careful.”

“I will. But I honestly can’t… Never mind. See you next month.”

“It’s closed in August.”

“Whatever.” He realised he was being rude, but couldn’t stand another word; he plunged off through the rain to the tube station.

~*~

August was hot and wet and unbearable. She was in his mind more than ever. He was supposed to go to a folk festival, but he stayed home, watching television, remembering her face as she smiled at him. Perhaps, he thought, Gilbert’s warning was too late – he was caught, he would waste away, like the lovers of La Belle Dame Sans Merci. Perhaps he would join her, haunting the place for the rest of time. Life had become something to be struggled through – but death might be no improvement.

Well, he must go back in September, and ask Gilbert if he knew any way of getting free of her enchantment. Maybe he could get exorcised, or something... round and round in his head, the thought of her, and then the fear of what she might be, and then the thought of her again, till he didn’t know which way was up.

~*~

September was fine and warm, but he hesitated about going out, and arrived well after the start. He took off his coat, and deliberately didn’t look round. A longways set had just finished, and he was about to make for the nearest empty seat, when a voice said, “Paul! Manalive, what brings you here from darkest Plumstead?”

He turned, and saw a stocky woman with short dark hair – Alice, whom he’d known at college. He was delighted to see someone he was sure was real, and beamed at her.

“Hi. Haven’t seen you in a parrot’s lifetime. Are you still in London?”

“I’m back – been working in Manchester for six months. Didn’t think you came here?”

“Only started recently. There’s not much down my way.”

“Well, good to see you. Oh, this is Steve, and his sister, Sam.”

And suddenly he was being introduced to the tall fair man and the red-haired woman. He felt dizzy, and hoped he managed to make sense. He shook Sam’s hand. It felt real. Alice, surely, hadn’t become a ghost – he’d have heard something. Sam had a distinct Wolverhampton accent, which to his besotted mind was wholly beautiful.

Alice was saying, “Sam’s just down from the Midlands, which are sodden and unkind, working at my place. We’ve known each other over the phone for a couple of years. Come on Steve, I like this one.”

And she hauled him off, leaving Paul to dance with Sam; and it went on like that till the interval, when they all went for a cup of tea – Sam didn’t drink. Paul looked round the tearoom for Gilbert, but couldn’t see him. The table in the corner was empty.

Steve got a tray of teas and cakes and biscuits, and they sat down at a large table, but Paul couldn’t help looking over his shoulder.

Sam said, “You usually sit over there, don’t you?”

Good lord, she’d noticed him. “Er, yes. I suppose I do.

“I saw you a couple of times, and I nearly came over, you were so on your own, but you didn’t really look as if you wanted company?”

“What?”

“Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but you were always sitting on your own when I saw you.”

“What? Oh. Um, you didn’t see anyone with me? A shortish bloke with brown hair?”

She frowned; “No.”

“Uh...” A horrible thought started to grow in his mind. On your own. People who aren’t there. They mess with your head... His stomach turned, and his vision darkened; he felt like a man who thinks he is walking on a broad, safe path, till the sun rises and he sees the sheer drop inches from his feet. They mess with your head...

“Are you all right? You’ve gone white.” Sam’s voice recalled him, and he shuddered. She took his hand, and hers was warm and slightly rough, with a callous on the index finger. He stared at it, and took a few deep breaths.

“I’m fine. Yeah. I’m fine. Just a bit dizzy for a minute”

“You sure?”

“Sure. It’s a bit hot in here, and I didn’t get round to eating before I came out.”

“D’you want a sandwich or something?”

He looked at her, the concern in her clear brown eyes, took another deep breath, and turned for a moment at the sudden feeling that someone was standing behind him, that Gilbert would come up and touch him on the shoulder... There was no one behind him. Gilbert was nowhere in the room. Paul turned back and shook his head.

“I’m fine. I’ll have another bit of cake. And believe me, I do like company. But some people’s more than others.”

He smiled, hesitantly; she smiled back, accepting the compliment; and his own smile grew wider and assured.

Long Dene Mill

Sarah Singleton

A girl walked the path along the little river through leafless woods. Midwinter trees climbed the valley sides, a distant mass of mauve and grey in brief flashes of sunshine. Lolling hart’s tongue ferns and thick moss grew on the broken stone walls, splashes of green in the dim, chambered wood.

Eleanor was making her way from Ford to Northcombe, two miles up the valley. She had four books in her bag to exchange at the lending library in the larger village. She crossed a stone stile into a low tunnel of hawthorn and holly close to the river’s edge, and skirted hollows of deep, watery mud, pocked by the hooves of cattle.

She always enjoyed the walk, and particularly today, alone. She was usually accompanied by her aunt, a vigorous, middle-aged spinster with an appetite for rambling and conversation, but this afternoon Constance was otherwise engaged, some charitable work at the vicarage. Eleanor hadn’t paid attention to the details.

The path opened into a narrow field beside one of the several lonely, stone mills, where the river spread into a pool beneath a noisy weir.

Then she stopped. Ahead – another walker, dressed in black, too far away to make out more than height and slenderness, the wide-brimmed hat on his head, a long stride. Nonetheless, his intent figure was the focus, the needle’s eye through which the landscape flowed- the dark and light day, the winter valley of river and trees.

Eleanor narrowed her eyes, trying to make him out. She started walking again, picking up her pace to catch up. She hopped over another stile and hurried past a row of low labourers’ cottages. The man had disappeared along the track by another large mill, uphill, where the path climbed the valley’s side. Eleanor started to run, but she didn’t see him again till the path opened up, higher now, offering a view of the wooded valley, the stream, Northcombe in the distance.

There he was, the man, heading into a copse of silvery beech trees. She was no closer, and wanted to call out but didn’t dare. She lost sight of him as the path turned, and then she too was in the trees, between twisting trunks, beneath the canopy of pale, glittering branches. Her heel skidded on a patch of mud and she dropped to her bottom, books thumping on the ground. Suddenly he was in front of her – the man – only yards away. She saw his face, a glimpse of white, inked with eyebrows and eyes. He turned, left the path and strode up the steep slope. She watched him climb, weaving through the trees. The black shape came apart on the air: a thread that snapped and vanished.

Cloud cut off the light. The landscape faded. Eleanor sprawled, cold, bruised and breathless. Above her, the mesh of twigs blurred.

~*~

The next day, Eleanor returned to the old mill. She did not expect to see the man again, but couldn’t resist revisiting the place where she’d seen him first. She crossed the footbridge over the weir. The mill building was tall and narrow, end on to the river, its bleak front overlooking trees and brambles. A stony track climbed away on the other side.

The mill was closed and sinking into dereliction, the front door locked. Dead nettles grew in an abandoned hencoop.

Eleanor wandered to the outbuildings at the back, found the mill wheel lying on the ground in the back yard, overwhelmed by dead grass. The door to the larger outbuilding stood open, wedged by a broken wooden cog. When she stepped inside two doves flew up, wings clattering, to pass over her head and out of the doorway. Stone floor, low beams – a storage room she guessed, seeing a swirl of mouldering hemp sacks and an old broom hanging on two rusty nails.

The mill was gloomy in aspect, dreary, damp and hard to reach. If the man in black had been visiting the mill, perhaps he intended to buy it?

Eleanor walked to the rear of the house and peered through a window. She cupped her hands around her eyes and spied an old kitchen: a range with its door open, a litter of plaster on the floor and the encroachment of ivy on the ceiling. Beside the back door she saw a terra cotta pot, split by frost. She pushed the fallen pieces aside and picked up a key.

Rooks circled and cawed against the grey sky. Water rushed noisily over the weir. She saw herself, as though from the other side of the river, a slight figure dressed in mourning, beneath the old grey house and its backdrop of winter trees, her head in its poke bonnet, tipped back.

She remembered how the man had seemed to vanish, walking away through the trees.

The key lay on the palm of her hand. She closed her fingers.

~*~

Damp and earth, decaying leaves and old plaster. A tendril of ivy. Gravel crunched under her feet. Eleanor touched the top of the kitchen table, leaving a fingerprint in the dust. She drew a line, formed an E and spelled out her name. A single china plate, a solitary knife.

Through the window, the exterior landscape dimmed and flattened.

She wandered into the parlour, where two plump armchairs, strangely tide-marked, grey with dust, waited on either side of the empty fireplace.

Eleanor sensed a watcher – the house itself, aware of the disturber. The house was its own memory and she was an intruder, a breach in the integrity of the past.

She walked from the parlour to the hallway, then up the bare wooden stairs, to find two bedrooms – one with a large bed, one a nursery with a cot. Net curtains hung at the windows. In the nursery she pushed the net aside and stared outside, through glass veiled in dirt and specks of mould, to see the river.

A draught moved through the room, like a sigh. Eleanor dropped the curtain and glanced over her shoulder.

~*~

She locked the back door but took the key away with her, dropped into a skirt pocket. That evening, sitting with her aunt by the fire at home, the weight of it pressed on her thigh.

“Who used to live at the old mill along the river?” she asked. “The tall one by the narrow field, where the cattle were last summer.”

Constance turned her kind, horsey face to her niece.

“I’ve no idea. It’s been empty as long as I can remember. Why do you ask?”

“The other day, I saw a man walking away from it.”

Her aunt was stitching something, hands busy, a reel of thread in her lap.

“Perhaps someone intends to live there again,” she said with equanimity. “It is a waste, standing empty. So many years of neglect – the place looks decidedly unpleasant, but I’m sure that could be changed with occupation.”

Eleanor had been living with her aunt for six months, since her father, her aunt’s brother, had died. She’d lived in London all her life, and this new home, the village in the depths of the countryside, was not convincingly real. Mostly she existed from day to day, missing her father, her true home and friends, the noise and bustle of London life. She walked, and read, living in a a dream from which she might at any moment wake to resume her real life.

“How could I find out? About the mill?”

Her aunt put her embroidery down. “My dear, why are you so eager to find out?”

“I don’t know. It intrigues me – a mystery.”

Constance smiled. “Well then, I’ll make some enquiries. It stands in Northcombe parish – you might ask for information in the parish office, I’m sure someone will know about it, particularly if there’s the possibility of a new resident.”

She picked up her sewing again and began to talk about the troubles of a poor local family from one of the sunken cottages along the Bath road. Eleanor only half listened. In her mind she saw the man dressed in black, walking ahead of her along the path by the river.

~*~

Time and no time, hours and days. Never an end to it, or a beginning. Rooks circle the mill, the river never ceases. It is a day like no other, like every other. The trees change but the forest is always the same.

You grow inside my belly, your presence felt under my heart, a coiled, curved thing that pushes and prods. From time to time I feel your tiny foot press against me, the jab of an elbow, the butt of your soft head against my pelvis. This gestation is out of ordinary time. The measure of nine months has little meaning on the long journey from conception to birth. We shall never be more together, you and I, although I haven’t seen your face. We are two as one, two hearts in one body, flesh of my flesh. A little stranger knitted, brewed and stewed inside a blood-hot vessel, come from nowhere, reaching from the long, primordial past into a present and future. I shall see you soon, little one, I shall hold you in my arms when your long journey is over. For now, I am the air you breathe, the food feeding for bones, the cradle in which you sleep and dream and grow.

~*~

Eleanor walked along the path to Northcombe, with Constance and half a dozen books. They carried umbrellas against the showers. She glanced at the mill as they walked past.

After the lending library, they visited the parish office where Constance made enquiries about the mill. The young man behind the desk checked his records and gave them the name of its owner, a company based in Bath.

“Long Dene Mill – no one’s lived there for forty years,” he said, peering at a list of dates and figures. “The mills are not as prosperous as they once were. Most of the business has gone to the city companies. Long Dene was built as a paper mill in the seventeenth century by a Bristol merchant, but the last records we have report it was used for milling corn.”

“My niece saw someone walking away from the place,” Constance said. “We were wondering if perhaps someone was interested in buying it.”

The clerk glanced at Eleanor and then returned his attention to the huge, leather bound ledger on his desk, thick pages inscribed with years of elaborate copperplate hand-writing.

“Well I’ve heard nothing about that, but why would I? If you wish to make an offer on the place yourself, you should contact the owners directly.”

Before Constance could speak, Eleanor jumped in: “I would be most grateful if you would provide me with a name and address,” she said. The clerk nodded, drew out a piece of paper and copied out the details. Her aunt’s face froze in an expression of surprise but she said nothing, only received the folded paper and pushed it into her handbag. Afterwards they walked to the Castle Inn for tea and cake in the lounge, by the fire.

“So, Eleanor, what is your plan?” Constance said with a conspiratorial smile, as she poured the tea. “Are you intending to make an offer for the mill? Don’t you think it rather dreary? I shouldn’t fancy living there myself.” She put the teapot down. “Or is it perhaps the young man who caught your interest? And I don’t mean the clerk, helpful though he might have been.”

Eleanor blushed. “I’m interested in the mill. I had a look around the other day, and I would like to know more about it. I’m sure there’s a story to it.”

She didn’t tell Constance about the key she’d found, and her theft of it.

~*~

Eleanor wrote a letter to the Bristol company, enquiring about the mill and hinting she was a prospective buyer. She asked the name of the last residents and if any other potential buyers had stepped forward.

After she’d posted the letter, she returned to the mill. She carried a bunch of holly, which she placed on the kitchen table. The place seemed different. Although her name was still evident in the dust, the atmosphere had altered – perhaps because the sun was bright, shining into the kitchen, the parlour and the little nursery upstairs.

She opened the wooden shutters on the inside of another little room downstairs, tearing spider webs, causing dust and dried leaves to fall on her head and the desk. The invasion of light revealed a bookcase by the wall, with three swollen books, and a photograph in a frame on the wall. Eleanor took the picture down, blew off the dust and wiped the glass surface with her gloved hand. A young woman’s face emerged: a smooth, rounded face with serious eyes. She didn’t smile. The eyes stared out of the photograph. Eleanor began to rummage, pulling out the desk drawers, peering at papers. She didn’t find much: one old ledge full of accounts, its paper moulding along one edge, several scraps with scribbled figures, a collection of old quills and an empty bottle of ink. She turned her attention to the photograph again.

“Who are you?” she said. “Are you still alive? A stout old lady, with a pipe-smoking husband and lots of grandchildren?”

The question hung on the air, almost visible, a ribbon of words floating in front of her face.

Eleanor returned to the main bedroom with its view up the river. Apart from the old bed, the room was empty. Several window panes were cracked; tiny, faded roses on the wallpaper. Outside, by the river, the path led to Northcombe – and there he was, the man in black, striding away from the mill.

Eleanor held her breath. Where had he come from? She could see him clearly, square-shouldered, walking intently, heading across the narrow field to the path. She ran downstairs, out of the back door and over the bridge. There he was – ahead of her.

“Excuse me, sir! Hello!” she called. The man didn’t hesitate. Perhaps he didn’t hear her. He reached the path without so much as glancing back.

“Excuse me, sir! May I speak with you?” Eleanor began to run, picking up her skirts and hurrying across the field. She kept her eyes fixed on the retreating figure. Something wasn’t as it should be. The moving shape of black, like a cut-out pressed against the water-colour of winter woods: a shape now growing thin on the air, like smoke. He dissolved and dispersing. Eleanor stopped and stared. No ambiguity this time. He hadn’t vanished into the trees and the distance. He had simply – disappeared.

Eleanor hugged her arms around her body. She doubted what she’d seen. An illusion, a fantasy born of her overactive mind, the loneliness of the place, a need for distraction? Already her certainty was fading. She couldn’t have seen him. She had seen him. For several minutes she stared.

She looked back at the old mill, hearing the loud rush of water through the weir and the clamour of rooks in the trees. A dark shape waited at the bedroom window.

Eleanor tried to calm her breathing.

Someone in the house. She ran back, hurtled up the stairs, out of breath, heart galloping, but the bedroom was empty. An open curtain, mottled with damp and mould, stirred slightly as she entered.

~*~

Rain and more rain. January gales whip the house, hurl water over the roof and swell the river. For three days the storm has blown. Darkness wraps the place. The eight short hours of day are grey, occluded by dense cloud. The fires smoke and smoulder. The river rises.

I don’t go out, only wait, sitting long hours in the parlour. You kick under my ribs. My hips ache when I lie down and try to rest. My joints throb with constant pain. My belly is tight, striated with scarlet lines. I can hardly eat and in brief moments of sleep my dreams are disturbed. I wait to be delivered.

Your father returns from the storerooms drenched to the skin, carrying puddles on his boots. The storm billows round him and into the house as he comes through the door. The battle exhausts him, preserving the mill in the face of the weather.

The river is rising, he says. I’ve never seen it so high. I’ve opened the weir but it isn’t enough. Another day and the house will flood. I have to take you to the village.

I shake my head, fingers laced over my belly. I can hardly walk – how can I travel to Northcombe in the storm?

You can’t stay here. If the rain goes on, the river’ll fill the house.

Maybe the weather will break.

He shakes his head, pale and worried.

Tomorrow then. Tomorrow I’ll take you.

Outside the wind howls. Rain splatters into the chimney. The fire smokes and sparks.

~*~

Every day of the following week, Eleanor returned to the mill – a compulsion she couldn’t resist.

She saw him again, the man in black, several times. Standing at the window where she’d seen the silhouette, she watched him disappear half way across the field. Another time he made it all the way to path and walked out of sight. Once he only reached the footbridge before dissolving into air.

Her name, written in dust, disappeared from the table.

Sometimes, on revisiting, items in the kitchen were rearranged. The knife would rest upon the plate, and the following day would lie at its side. The photograph of the woman returned to its hook on the wall. The chairs in the parlour shifted slightly, leaving tracks in the dirt.

Eleanor wasn’t afraid. This house, the story she was seeing in captivating glimpses, became more significant than her other life – aunt, village, books. She had a feeling – if she could step through, squeeze sideways, she would find herself wholly in the other place, where a man walked to the path and a woman watched at the window. She felt her presence in the real world grow thin. Her aunt seemed far away, even as they conversed over dinner. She lost her appetite. Faraway Constance worried and tried to cheer her up, suggested Eleanor involve herself in the society of the village. But Eleanor shook her head, idled and daydreamed. She was becoming insubstantial. When Constance went out, she headed for the old mill with the stolen key in her pocket.

~*~

Sky of slate and iron. Eleanor hurried through the mud, carrying her umbrella. The first fat spots fell as she unlocked the door and stepped inside. She felt the embrace of the house, the dusty air, the perfume of plaster and damp. In the kitchen and parlour she observed the tidemarks on the walls, salty residue erupting from the paint and peeling paper. In the kitchen, the plate lay shattered on the flagstones. Remaining items of crockery had shifted on the dresser. The doors on the range hung open.

She wandered around the house. The beds had moved too, just a little, as though a giant had picked up the place and given it a shake. Eleanor could sense something more – a prickle in the air, an itch, a frost. She was close.

The rain began to fall in earnest. Soon a sheet of grey water curtained the house. She could hardly see beyond the parlour window to the world outside. Somewhere in the kitchen, water dripped through a hole in the ceiling, an echoing note. As water seeped, further drippings began. Eleanor sheltered in the corner of the parlour, feet tucked up on a chair. The room grew darker. She closed her eyes, imagining the river flooding its banks, flowing through the mill with a load of sticks, branches, mud, manure and garbage, all the weight and cold of it.

A long, unearthly cry rang through the house. Eleanor opened her eyes. She stood up and waited for the second cry, low and animal, causing her nerves to jangle in sympathy. She pushed open the parlour door and climbed the gloomy stairs, one slow step at a time. She passed from daylight into dusk.

Peering through the doorway, Eleanor saw the bedroom lit by an oil lamp. A woman lay in the bed, hair unpinned, sweaty faced. Beside her the man in black fretted.

“It’s too late! Too late now. I can’t move!” she said, before the pain overwhelmed her again and she curled up, clutching the blankets. The man stood helplessly, cupping his hands, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

When the woman surfaced from the pain, she grabbed his hand.

“Fetch help,” she said. “Go to the midwife. Bring her.”

“I can’t leave you alone!”

“You must go. I can’t bear this. I’m going to die, the baby will die. You must go.”

The next pain came and she rolled over on her front. Blood shone on the front of her nightdress. The contraction drained the last drop of colour from her face, and then her skin seemed to grey.

“Go through the wood and across the field,” she said. “You’ll be quicker. But go, please, now, I beg you.”

The man’s eyes were glazed. He could hardly move, transfixed by the sight of the woman’s suffering. He still hesitated.

“James, go!” she said.

The spell broke. He kissed her hand and hurried out of the room. He passed through Eleanor. She felt nothing, but he shivered and glanced around him before going downstairs. He tugged on his coat, boots and hat, and left through the front door.

~*~

Deluge. The river presses at its limits, filthy brown, tangled with detritus, a monster. Rain lashes down in rods. The river banks squirm, dissolving into mud.

The man tugs at the brim of his hat and starts to walk. His mind is set on the journey to the midwife, the path along the river, the shortcut up through the trees. Nothing else matters. He is intent.

Water everywhere – above him, below him, all around. Within moments he is drenched. The man steps on the footbridge. He knows the way to go, how quick he must be. The route unfolds in front of him. He wills himself to his destination.

The river surges, reaches out a multitude of cold brown paws, knocks the man from the bridge, turns him over, clutches him, swallows him.

Within a moment he’s gone. The rain continues.

The river rises again, in a great wave, spilling over its restraints, pouring over the field to one side, the house on the other.

Above, in a lighted window, the woman screams.

She needs him. Waits for him.

Waits.

~*~

Eleanor stood in the front doorway. The man had disappeared.

The rain eased and a moment later sunlight penetrated the cloud and beamed into the house.

She shut the door. When she tried the handle again, it was locked. Drops glittered on the window in the parlour. The mirror above the fireplace had a crack running through it. In the kitchen an enamel pot on the dresser had overturned, spilling aged beans that had begun to sprout, while conversely, the holly on the table had withered, leaves and berries turning black.

Eleanor’s mind was empty, her heart drained and scoured out. She didn’t want to stay in the house. She never wanted to visit it again. She locked the back door as she left, and replaced the key beneath the broken terra cotta pot.

When Eleanor got home, Constance was sitting by the fire, reading a novel.

“I’ve just made tea,” she said. Biscuits waited on a plate.

~*~

A week later, a letter arrived for Eleanor with a Bristol postmark. The letter inside informed her they had no plans to sell the building at Long Dene, which might at some unspecified point in the future be brought back into use as a paper mill.

She threw the letter on the fire.

When next they walked to the lending library at Northcombe, Eleanor averted her eyes when they crossed the narrow field.

If, from time to time, she caught a glimpse of black along the path, Eleanor declined it any interest or attention. She looked the other way.

The White Otter

Amanda Hemingway

This is the story of something which happened to some friends of mine, though I was involved – an accident, an incident, call it what you like: there isn’t really a word that fits. I could say it was something so bizarre, so unnatural, so terrifying as to make your hair stand on end, but it all depends on what you believe really happened, and, of course, what sort of things affect your hair that way. Apart from an excess of gel.

I’ve always had a horror of taxidermy. I can’t understand why people should wish to decorate their homes with dead bodies – ornament or trophy, animal or bird or fish. As a child I was taken to a museum to see an exhibition by that Victorian guy whose name I’ve forgotten, who did those pageants with kittens, all dressed up and posed in a variety of scenarios, like miniature furry humans. The thought of the poor creatures being killed, when they were tiny and helpless – killed very carefully so as not to spoil their looks – then stuffed, dolled up, arranged on their little stages, was so horrible I rushed outside and was violently sick. Okay, I had just eaten four choc ices, but my reaction, I’ve always known, was to the kitty corpses. Stuffed animals have made me feel slightly queasy ever since. Now – well, I’ll get around to that.

Fortunately, you don’t see many of them in Knightsbridge, which is where I have my flat, and the sort of people I hang out with don’t do dead-body decor.

My friend who’s at the centre of this story lives in Sussex, which Stella Gibbons aptly called ‘darkest Sussex’, where anything can happen and often does. We’d been at boarding school together, Sandways, all through our teens; it’s a bond which lasts. Annabel had grown up in the country and came to the big city post-uni to find a job (publishing) and a mate (a choice of losers). After her marriage she’d quit the job and moved back to the kind of rural fastness where she felt most at home. She has unerring bad taste in men, always falling for the over-pretty, little-boy-lost types who desperately need mothering since they are incapable of managing their own lives. Neil Villiers is no exception. Without being precisely effeminate, he’s rather fragile-looking, handsome in an old-fashioned way: he would look appropriate in a Regency sporting print with a long coat, a long gun, a brace of pheasant and a spaniel. He might have been a slightly neurotic Bingley (Annabel adores Pride and Prejudice), only the dominating influence in his life was not Darcy but his father. Gordon Villiers was a self-made multi-millionaire – possibly even a billionaire – who claimed aristocratic connections and lived in a Sussex mansion which had once belonged to the local squire, adopting those aspects of the lifestyle which amused him, bullying his family and generally behaving like the village despot. Gaddafi in a Barbour. His eldest son had had to go to Australia to escape him; of his two daughters, one lived on a beach in Thailand, one in rehab. Neil, the apple of his eye – if such apples are soft at the core and badly bruised – was given, on his marriage, the lodge by the manor gates, so he and his new wife could be part of the cosy family establishment. By the time Annabel realised what she had got herself into, it was too late.

Gordon had made his money in property; Neil, whose financial skills were non-existent, dabbled in antiques. He was a natural dabbler: he had quite a good eye but made a lousy salesman and was far too conscientious for such a cut-throat business. It was he who bought the white otter, declaring it a bargain at £3500. Vintage taxidermy, he assured me, was the coming thing, and the albino otter was very rare, it should fetch a lot of money at the right auction. Meanwhile, it stood in a glass case on the sideboard next to the dining table. I’d gone down for the weekend and there it was, glaring at me all through dinner. This otter didn’t have the mouldy look of most stuffed animals: its coat gleamed as it must have done in life. It was big, too, I estimated well over three feet long, and posed for dramatic effect with a dismembered fish beneath one paw, the other raised, its mouth open in a feral gape and daubed with red paint to simulate blood.

“It’s got fangs,” I said. “It’s got fangs like a vampire. Otters aren’t supposed to have fangs – are they?”

“Must do,” Neil said happily.

“It was a good buy,” Annabel insisted, ever loyal. “I’m sure Neil’s right: he’ll get lots of money for it.”

“How can you have it in the house?” I said. “It totally creeps me out.”

“It may have come from round here,” Neil pursued, as if the notion might reassure me. “I got it at a clearance sale after this chap died, over in Pebworth. Dad says there were stories about a white otter down by the river when he was a boy. He thinks his grandfather might have shot it.” It was not a fact Gordon Villiers wanted to boast about, but his grandparent had apparently been a gamekeeper, or possibly a poacher, on the estate he now owned.

“Why would they shoot it?” I asked, dimly aware of potential conservation issues.

“Could ruin the trout fishing,” Neil said, slightly shocked I didn’t get it. “Honestly, Caroline –!”

“I like animals alive,” I said. I’m not, in general, an animal person – having to scoop up doggy poop is only marginally less disgusting than leaving it for people to tread in – but I get on with other people’s pets, since the owners do the yukky part. I was stroking Beth, Neil’s chocolate Lab, under the table, unobtrusively feeding her roast potatoes since they’re bad for my figure. Annabel is a wonderful cook. It’s disastrous.

Beth was short for Beth Gelert, the hound in the famous poem, whose master slew him when he returned from the hunt to find the dog covered in blood and the baby missing. Too late, the baby turned up safe and they dragged a dead wolf from under the sofa. Neil’s chocolate Lab was actually a bitch, named owing to a misunderstanding: he thought Beth was short for Elizabeth. He was like that: sweet, but hopeless.

Beth the Lab had been intended for a gun dog but had turned out completely incompetent since she was terrified of bangs and bolted home every time a shotgun went off. Gordon poured derision on both her and her master for this, but that’s what he was like.

The otter had somehow taken possession of my imagination. That night, I dreamed about it. I saw it dislodging the lid from the display case and climbing out, padding up the stairs to my room like a soft-footed ghost. I woke, and thought I heard the pattering of paws in the passage outside, and something sniffing at my door. Of course, it was Beth, only Beth, but I couldn’t bring myself to get up and open the door, I pulled the quilt up to my neck and shivered until the sniffing stopped, or the dream retreated, or the fantasy faded away.

In the morning, I told Annabel, who laughed and laughed.

“Really, Caro,” she said, “I didn’t think you were the nervous type. I expect it was just a nightmare. You can’t have heard Beth: she was shut in our room.”

By daylight, I wasn’t entirely sure what I had or hadn’t heard, so I let it go.

“Anyway,” Annabel said, “Neil will’ve sold it before you come down again. No more bad dreams.”

In the end, I didn’t go back until New Year, more than three months later. I’d been skiing over Christmas and decided I’d burned up enough calories to justify the indulgence of Annabel’s cooking, and besides, after the full-on glamourfest of St Moritz every day I felt the urge for a little restful country rustication. Annabel and I had spoken regularly on the phone, so I knew the situation with Neil and his father was deteriorating. She was desperate for them to move away from the dreaded paternal influence, but of course Neil had no money of his own, nor the means of earning any, and was dependant on Gordon’s every whim. Annabel wanted children, but refused to bring them up in such a warped environment, which was causing trouble between her and her husband. The latter maintained his father was simply a ‘forceful personality’ who ‘liked his own way’, rather than a mad dictator and mental sadist. Annabel was looking for another job but there was little available in the area and in these days of recession she couldn’t find any position with a salary that would cover their needs.

“I love Neil,” she said tragically. “I don’t want to leave him, but…”

“Of course you mustn’t leave him,” I said, shocked. His predecessors had included a wannabe writer with permanent block and a failed circus performer. God knew what she might come up with next. “How old is Gordon?”

“Barely seventy,” Annabel said, becoming even more tragic. “Tough as Sandways suet. He’ll live forever.”

“Bugger.”

I was so distracted during that last phone call I forgot to ask if Neil had sold it. The otter. Naturally he hadn’t. I arrived and there it was, poised in the same demi-pounce on the trout, looking somehow whiter and glossier than ever, almost as if it was… well-fed. And there seemed to be more blood round its mouth…

“Oh yes, Neil did that,” Annabel said blithely. “He thought it needed a re-touch. He put it in an auction, but it didn’t make the reserve. The auction wasn’t a big enough one: the serious collectors weren’t there.”

“Give it away,” I said. “Get rid of it. Bury it.”

“You really have a thing about it, don’t you?” Annabel looked baffled. “It’s harmless, Caro.”

“It’s dead. Would you keep an Egyptian mummy in the house? In scientific terms, that’s harmless too.”

That night, Gordon came to dinner, with Neil’s mother, Melanie, a meek, shrinking woman who had obviously spent her whole life scampering after her husband like a mouse after a very big cheese, probably having the sort of sex that Ian McEwan wrote about in On Chesil Beach. She was wearing fake Ungaro and flinched every time Gordon sniped at her. He greeted me with enthusiasm, the kind that has undercurrents. We’d met twice before, though only briefly; on this occasion, he’d clearly decided to use me to score off both wife and daughter-in-law, bulldozing me into a dinner-table flirtation, pointing up my London glamour and even my job (PR) in an attempt to make both women look countrified and ineffectual. Under his thumb, their opportunities must be strictly limited, so the comparison was odorous. I wasn’t playing ball but even when I complimented her on the Ungaro Melanie glowered as if everything was my fault.

“And,” I added, having seconds of a divine cassoulet, “Annabel’s food is absolutely gorgeous. I can’t cook to save my life. Last time I had people round I got everything from M&S.”

“Perhaps that’s why you’re so slim,” said Gordon, doing jovial and nasty in one go. “Bel here seems to be getting a bit porky. Too much nibbling on her own dishes. She’ll have to watch out Neil doesn’t start looking elsewhere, haha!”

Annabel’s always been slightly plump: it suits her. I kicked Neil under the table.

“I l-like curvy women,” he stammered. Thirty-one years old, and still stammered when he tried to answer his father back. But he’d probably pooed his nappy at Daddy’s first sneer, and had never really moved on from that.

Gordon ignored him. “It’s nice to have such a stunning woman around,” he said, grinning wolfishly at me. “Makes a pleasant change. Are you staying for the shoot on Monday?”

I was caught off-guard. “I hate guns…”

“Nonsense, girl. Real women like guns: they’re sexy. You’re a real woman – a woman and a half, I’ll bet. I’ll teach you: don’t you worry.”

“I don’t like killing things!” Inadvertently, my glance flicked to the white otter.

Gordon followed my gaze while paying no attention to what I said. He was the sort of person who dismissed out-of-hand any remarks that didn’t accord with his world-view. “Amazing, isn’t it? My grandfather shot him, you know. I remember hearing stories about that otter when I was a boy: they called him the Ghost, said he was as cunning as a snake and as mean as a wolf and quicker than any hound. The trout along our river are so big, there was even a rumour he was the devil himself come to dine off them. But my grandfather got him. Did a great job, that taxidermist. Looks like he only died yesterday, doesn’t it? Ought to be worth ten grand. ‘Course, my stupid son can’t even sell it. Neil couldn’t sell the crown jewels to a king on coronation day!”

“He’ll sell it soon,” Annabel said. “He just has to find the right venue.”

“I wouldn’t have it if you paid me,” I said. “It’s creepy.”

“Silly girl.” Gordon was doing indulgent to me now. “You spend too much time with London pansies. Come along on Monday and I’ll show you some real sport – for real men.”

Like shooting a load of helpless birds who can’t shoot back, I thought.

“And,” said Gordon, catching sight of Beth slipping under a chair (she always avoided him), “for God’s sake, Neil, don’t let that damn dog out. Of all the pathetic bitches… Surrounded by them, ain’t I? We’ll take Reggie and Ronnie tomorrow; they’re good gun-dogs. You come along, Caroline: I’ll show you what to do.”

I’m leaving, I thought. I’m leaving Monday morning without fail. If there isn’t a train I’ll walk to London, but I’m never going to touch a gun or try and kill anything, ever. Except perhaps Gordon himself, since the world would obviously be better off without him…

In due course, Gordon and Melanie walked home across the park. I said polite goodnights and vented my impolite feelings to Annabel while Neil went gloomily to bed.

“You’re a clever cook,” I said. “Can’t you poison him?”

“I wish,” she sighed, wistfully. “Neil loves him, you know. That’s the awful part. I suppose you can’t help loving your parents, no matter how they behave. And Neil’s a loving sort of person.”

I didn’t comment.

I was still tired after skiing and thanks to Neil’s lavishness with the wine I fell asleep quickly. The dream came again. Paws on the stairs, pitter-pat, pitter-pat, and then I woke, I know I woke – I was conscious, rigid with terror, hearing the faint sound of sniffing along the base of my door… Long after it ceased, I must have gone to sleep again.

In the morning, I asked Annabel: “Was Beth in your room last night?”

“Of course. She always is.”

I didn’t mention the nightmare, not this time. Maybe it was all in my head.

We spent New Year’s Eve at a party in the village. There were enough people for me to keep Gordon at a safe distance while I flirted indiscriminately with several men. Neil got drunk and Annabel and I took him home in the small hours, put him to bed, and sat up talking till past four. I almost forgot about the otter. That night, I slept without dreams.

The next morning Neil set off early for the shoot, looking only slightly the worse for wear. I packed, and Annabel drove me to the station. The trains were few, but they were running: I could return to civilisation.

It was a dreary sort of day, not crisp and frosty like it should have been but with a damp, grey chill in the air that ate into your bones. A day to be in London, with traffic and lights and people getting between you and the weather. A day to be in a living room with a big fake fire, or a coffee bar, or a pub. A day to watch television. I got home, made the coffee, switched on the TV. Put Gordon Villiers and stuffed otters and all Annabel’s troubles out of my mind.

About an hour later, my phone rang. Annabel.

“Caro? Oh Caro…”

~*~

I got a taxi to Sussex, even though it was horribly expensive, because I needed to get there fast. I was talking to Annabel en route, but she was sobbing so much it took me a while to work out exactly what had happened. They’d insisted on putting Beth down immediately. Annabel couldn’t stop crying about it, she said she’d held her, looked into her eyes, those big brown Labrador eyes all affection and loyalty, until the soul went out of them for good. (I thought of feeding her roast potatoes under the table, dear soppy Beth who was afraid of guns.) Neil was upstairs crying for his dog, for his father, his wife didn’t know which and probably nor did he. The doctor had given Melanie a sedative but Annabel wouldn’t take anything, someone had to stay with it and try to sort things out. The police had sent the body for autopsy but they said the cause of death was clear. Gordon’s throat was torn out…

“Beth wouldn’t,” I said, appalled. “She couldn’t… Not Beth. Not Beth.”

“I want to bury her,” Annabel said. “Before Neil comes down. I don’t want him to see her… Will you help me?”

Burying a dog. So not my style. I really hated dead things.

“Yes,” I said.

“Thanks Caro. I knew you’d be there for me. I’m so sorry – so sorry…”

“Never mind that. Where – when did this happen?”

“This morning. While we were out. I went to see a friend after I dropped you off. When I got home, I – I found him. Oh Caro, there was so much blood –”

“What was he doing in the lodge? He was supposed to be at the shoot.”

“He came to find you. Apparently, he didn’t know you’d left – he said he would bring you along himself…”

Was I going to feel guilty? Nope. No guilt in not wanting to take a gun and shoot some poor birds who’d never done me any harm. Then last night we’d joked about poisoning Gordon, and now he was dead. Bugger it, I wasn’t going to feel guilty about that either. Death doesn’t make you a nice person. But the cold-water-slap of reality was so different from the small-hours smalltalk, the shock of it, the raw horror… I was still trying to take it in.

“But Beth – why would she attack him?”

“The police said – maybe she thought he was an intruder.”

“Did he have a key?”

“Yes of course. It’s his house. I mean, it was.”

“So he didn’t break in, and she knows him – knew him. She didn’t like him, but…”

“He had a gun. I told them, she was afraid of guns. They said… maybe that was it. The gun. The smell of it, or something. The gunpowder smell. They reckon he fired it when she attacked, but he didn’t hit her. Just the wall. The plaster’s come down. It’s such a mess, the dining room. All plaster and blood.”

“She’d have run a mile,” I said positively. “Even if she did leap at him, or something like that, when he fired the gun she’d have been out of there.”

“The police said… you never know, with animals.”

The taxi seemed to take ages. I arrived at the lodge, eventually; the police had gone by then. Annabel clung to me. She’d stopped crying but there was blood on her clothes, brown and stiff and dried – more blood on her hands in rust-coloured smears.

“You should wash and change,” I said, trying to be practical. Practical had never been my strong suit. It had never needed to be, I suppose.

“We ought to bury Beth first,” she said. “I was trying to dig a hole…”

She’d been digging at the end of the rose-bed; the soil was looser there. Fortunately the ground wasn’t frozen, or we’d never have managed it. There was only one spade so I took over, borrowing her spare wellies and gardening gloves, things I never wear. But then, I’d never buried a body before, or even dug a hole. I found myself thinking it must be bloody hard work to be a mass murderer, burying all those victims in your garden – and human bodies are much bigger, they need bigger holes. Beth was small for a Lab, stocky rather than leggy… Annabel was so shaken, I finished the hole myself, though it took ages, I can’t really remember how long.

I kept asking questions, struggling to figure out how something so awful could have happened.

“How could they tell it was an animal which killed him?” I demanded. “Perhaps he was shot – in the throat. That’s possible, isn”t it?”

“There was blood in Beth’s mouth, and toothmarks…”

“She might have tried to lick him better,” I said. “St Bernard’s do that, when they find someone in the snow. I heard that in Switzerland.”

“Toothmarks,” Annabel reiterated, speaking with difficulty, “in his neck, Gordon’s neck… The doctor found a piece of canine, broken off. He said – he said it belonged to an animal. C-case closed.”

When the hole was deep enough, we bundled Beth in a blanket and placed her in it. Her mouth was open; her teeth didn’t look chipped to me, but how could I tell?

We were too upset to say much, but Annabel prayed: “Please God, take her to dog heaven, whatever she did. I’m sure she was only protecting us.”

Inside the house, there was crime scene tape across the dining room door, blue and white, but it hung loose. “We can go in now,” Annabel said. “They’ve finished. It’s just… such a mess. Such a horrible, horrible mess.”

“You go shower and change,” I said. “I’ll make tea. Or Scotch. Or both.”

“I must look in on Neil…”

“Then shower and change.”

She went upstairs. I stood at the dining room door. The dangling strip of tape made it ominous, sinister, a Bluebeard’s Chamber door, a door to the Room of Doom. I had to open it, I don’t know why. Curiosity, fascination, horror – whichever. I turned the knob, pushed it wide…

As Annabel said, it was a mess. The gunshot had punched a big hole in one wall; plaster flakes and dust were everywhere; blood spatter, like in a crime show – a great spray of it – seemed to have arced across the room. Beth must have bitten through that major neck vein, the carroty one, the caryatid vein, I used to call it, joking around, joking… The blood was dark now, purplish-brown like the stains on Annabel’s clothes. A chair was knocked over; a vase had spilt its flowers across the table; the lid was off the otter’s case.

I thought: There must be plaster dust all over the otter.

But it didn’t look dusty. It looked white and glossy as ever.

The otter… I walked towards it like something was pulling me, something irresistible: curiosity, fascination, horror. There was no dust on it at all. Its fur was clean, shining. Its eyes gleamed like wet blood. Albinos have pink eyes but the taxidermist had made these red. They were the only red thing in all that terrible room. Perhaps because of its pose, with its paw on the trout, it seemed to be gloating, exuding a malignant satisfaction, even triumph…

But its eyes shouldn’t be the only red. Neil had re-touched the blood round its mouth: I’d noticed it two days ago. The painted blood which was now as brown and dry as the spatter on the wall. I peered closer… closer… One of the big fangs seemed to be broken off at the tip…

Annabel found me when she came downstairs from the shower, lying on the floor in a dead faint.

~*~

There was nothing we could do, of course. You can’t ask the police to test the paint in the mouth of stuffed otter for blood, or request to match a tooth-fragment to its broken incisor. Forensics are expensive – and they’d only have laughed. A couple of weeks later, when Neil was up to it, we planted a rose-bush on Beth’s grave, and read from the poem, her poem, Spencer’s Beth Gelert. It wasn’t quite right, but what did it matter? She had been true, and faithful, and misjudged.

I went to Gordon’s funeral, too, but only to support Annabel. It was much less moving – in fact, it only moved me to the pub, as quickly as possible.

Neil didn’t sell the otter. He buried it, down by the river; Annabel says some of the village kids claim to have seen it, after dark, sliding down the bank into the water, but that’s probably just an excess of local beer. After all, we’re the only ones who know it’s buried there.

Neil inherited a quarter of the estate; Annabel’s pregnant. All good. I just don’t want to think about how it happened.

Now, when I’m confronted with a stuffed animal, I don’t feel queasy, because I don’t look, I walk away…

I hate taxidermy.

The Ghost (In Two Letters)

Tanith Lee

The Ghost walked into the elaborate Dining Room of the Black Lion Hotel at exactly thirteen minutes past 7p.m. He was fashionably late.

He knew nobody there, he thought, apart from the ‘Happy Couple’. Burn (was that an abbreviation of Bernard - or Burning? – the Ghost had never known) was expansively greeting people by the free bar, under the coloured lights. Dinner itself was scheduled for eight o’clock. But where was she - for an anxious moment the Ghost could not quite recapture her name. But of course, it did come back. He was, after all, haunted by it, her name, the Ghost. Jolinda Franken, as it had appeared in the theatre programme; Joli for short. He didn’t like ‘Joli’, he thought now. And did he like her? No, he thought. He only loved her. And there she was. In a silky orange outfit, presumably her ‘Wedding Dress’. Dark hair streaming to her waist, honey-colour eyes wide with excitement and mascara. Cool and hot.

She had not seen him. But presumably she, not Burn, had sent the invitation.

The Ghost took one of the glasses of quite decent champagne from the edge of the bar. He was glad, even in the state he was, he could grip the glass. Yet, when he sipped and swallowed a couple of times, the drink seemed flat and pale to him, a worn-out taste... He set the glass aside half consumed.

All the while, his eyes having located her, followed her

Jolinda, Joli. Was she beautiful? Was she what he had taken her for? Did he love her, even now?

Puzzled, he frowned, and someone in the adjacent crush of guests noticed him. “Hi! Cheer up! It’s a wedding! I’m Steve – and you?”

“Matthew,” he said, thoughtless. Yes. He was Matthew.

But “Hi, Matt!” abreviated the idiot, swigging back his full and foamy glass and reaching for a refill. “Who is it you know? Burny, or Joli?”

“Oh,” he said vaguely, “both.” Lies. He knew neither of them.

“He’s a lucky fuck, isn’t he, old Burn.”

“Yes,” said the Ghost, reflectively,

“I mean, she’s a looker – and an actor – I admit, never seen her in anything myself. But I don’t do theatre much. Have you?”

“Yes,” said the Ghost.

He did not add that he had acted opposite Joli only last year, in that strange production in Edinburgh, The Talking Street. A silly play, badly written – except, almost annoyingly, for its radiant middle section. He had saved himself each night, he felt, making do through all the first half hour, just being – what was it? Professional – until you hit the buffers and exploded, three quarters of an hour before the interval. And that explosion had been his big scene with her. With Joli – Jolinda. Actors often got tangled up ‘romantically’ because passion had to burst out between them in a blaze, on stage, or in front of the camera. And presumably that was what had happened with them. From the tussle and fireworks on stage they were eventually decanted into the real sex scenes in his bed, there in the canny grey windings of that Scottish town. She knew it was nothing, really. The ‘pleasure and suppliance of a minute’. But for him it had meant rather more. Lovers, Matthew and Jolinda, Matt and Joli. (The twat with the abreviation-fix had wandered off by now, the Ghost was alone again in the heart of the crowd.) Interesting, so much raucous festive life, and at its core, his deadness.

Was that then what finally he felt about her, his lover? Only deadness? She did not seem, certainly, as he recalled – vulnerable, inflammatory, tender – other. No, this sexy young woman in her orange silk – and silk it was, for Burn, with his IT business, could afford it – she looked to the Ghost... only like – a memory.

Does it always come to this? Did I have to come to this to see the bitter truth of it, a tissue of lies, and like all tissues easily sodden with tears, or blood.

And now they were all to sit down to dinner. He moved, will-less, to the long tables, among the rest. Maybe there was a place marked for him? No, they hadn’t gone that far. You simply sat where there was room. He took a chair way down from the cross-wise main table where Burn and she had sat. He could see her better from here. That was, she was farther off and so, oddly, clearly to be focused on. Outside the tall windows the sun had started its long English set. The hotel garden, with its flowers and nicely-shaped tame trees, filled with shadow. The sky was pinkly gold, toning well with the orange dress; probably ordered, the sky, beforehand. And candles were being lit in here by the hotel staff.

There was perhaps a danger he would come to see, in the cameo of the candlelight, and after the sun’s long fade, only her. Well, why not. She was why he had come here.

“Oh, hello,” said a plump young woman to his left. “I’m Susie.”

“Matthew,” he said.

“Sorry, what? Andrew did you say?”

“Hey,” (male voice) “Andrew, could you pass that wine carafe along, mate?”

He wondered if actually he could, but taking hold of the glassy jug, although his chilled fingers seemed to sink into its side as if into a cold jelly, he did make it move. That was love then. Love could move a wine carafe, even now, just as Dante told you it moved the sun and the other stars.

His thoughts grew disorganized again. He wondered if he would be able to see that celestial movement, see the sun, for example, sinking inch by inch... But really, no doubt, he couldn’t. All he would see was that dark-haired girl, beautiful in the most ordinary way, and shining with an almost painterly candle-ine lustre, as she clasped the hand of her husband. Burn.

Obviously, Matthew didn’t know Burn. Only of him. But that was enough. Matthew stared. Burn was ugly, wasn’t he. Was he? He was a creep with too-short hair and a fat mouth. In a couple more years he’d be fat. Or he’d work out in the gym and get muscle-bound. Or somebody would kill him for being the dubious business type Matthew had assumed Burn was.

The Ghost recollected when Jolinda first mentioned Burn. The recreated moments fell like thin cold slates into the Ghost’s mind. It was when he and she came back from Edinburgh. The small part that had been mooted for him at the National had fallen through, as they so often did. His agent was talking about securing him work on a commercial – “Okay, Matthew, I know it isn’t sixteenth sword-porter in Lear, but you’ll get good money –”

“Off which you’ll take your fifteen percent,” Matthew added, so they had parted lukewarm to frigid. And then, going back to his room, Jolinda had gone out. And later she called him, “Sorry, Matthew. Someone I have to see. I’ll be back – oh, midnight. Don’t wait up, love.” As if he were her bloody mother. She didn’t come back any way. (People always called each other, just ‘met’ – so direct. More honest – or more crass?) And next day they did meet, in the wine bar off the Strand. “Look, Matthew, I haven’t been quite straight with you. I’m really sorry. It’s just –” It turned out she had been seeing Burn (Bernard? Burning?) for some months before the Edinburgh stint. “I didn’t know I’d meet someone like you... Oh, love,” she added, sorrowful, acting her guts out, he was sure. “I’ve been a bitch. I couldn’t resist. You’re so tempting. And we’ve had a great time, haven’t we? I couldn’t have got through that crappy run if I hadn’t been with you –”

“But now you’re with him.”

“Well, you see.” She paused, and drank down all the wine in her big glass – as if she desperately needed it, or more likely she wanted to finish it before she made a bolt for a taxi, Hampstead and Burn. “You see... he and I – we sort of – we may get married. I mean, not yet. In the summer. And so I can’t go on seeing you, can I? I mean, it wouldn’t be fair to him.”

“Were you fair to him in Edinburgh?” he had asked her deadly.

“No. Nor to you. Nor me. But – these things happen.”

These things.

Before she could make her bolt for freedom he himself got up and left.

Yes, people always called, or texted each other, or emailed if you could afford a computer. Or they just met. He did try once, twice, to write to her, a letter. But he tore both of them up. Wasted paper.

She though had called him twice, since then. Once she was high – booze, or something; she liked her spliff. She seemed to be saying during these calls she would really enjoy one last sex session with him. Conceivably, he later thought, even after she got roped and tied with Burn, she might still like the occasional off-leash frolic with Matthew.. But he wouldn’t do that. They said women were the ones that got hurt, couldn’t let go, made themselves miserable, died inside. Christ, what fucking rubbish. He had died, inside, the Ghost. You couldn’t help where you loved, even if it was some illusion, some flake of candle-gleam, some echo of a once-off kiss or cry, a body smooth and soft as fur, a laugh you would know in blind darkness, the lamp of a golden eye that, for all those single seconds, saw only you.

He would always have to love her. He could let go – but love wouldn’t let go of him. Love, which could move a wing, carafe and the sun, had him firmly by its poisoned fangs and was shaking him to and fro. He would always love that stupid, brainless, ordinary scrap of flesh – a rag, a bone, and a hank of brunette hair –

“Are you done, sir?”

He glanced. A waitress leaning to him. There had been – still was – something uneaten on his plate – paté, he guessed, a whisker of purple and green salad.

Am I done? “Yes,” he said, “quite done.”

And away it went, and here was something else. He stared at it, as he had stared at her, and could not translate what it was – meat? Pasta? – as he could not, any more, make out what she was.

The sun had gone down. A dark blue vitreous box covered the garden, with the twinkle of city lights beyond, the ever-reassuring pretence of mundane reality.

The Ghost reached for his glass. Found now he had neither the will nor the strength to raise it. But he would have to, he thought, because look, Burn and Joli were kissing in a sloppy adolescent way no actor, surely, would ever disgrace themself with in public. And then there was going to be a speech – the Best Man – who the hell was that – oh, that grinning twot with a beard – and the Ghost too would be expected to clap and perhaps whistle, and lift and gulp champagne, and where had the second or third course gone?

The plump woman to his left was reaching right across him to take a chocolate from the thin woman on his right...

How bright the candles. But she, Joli, had not taught them their torchlike brightness. Her hair was dull and spoiled with the expensive treacle of^1 hair products. Her eyes were dull as lead.

The audience laughed at the Best Man’s best joke. God knew what it had been.

The Ghost remembered finding the invitation to this reception. It was in the hall of the flats. He saw it just after

His agent called, on the crackling mobile that was running out of money, to say the commercial for the Energade Health Boost Drink had gone to another.

(A disco had started by now and figures flooded the Dining Room floor. He was partly conscious of their gesticulations, and the softly pulsating lights. And a clock sounded, or only a loud novelty watch – midnight, was it?)

‘Love to welcome you,’ the invite had said. ‘This happy celebration’ ‘Our valued Guest’ –

Why did she send it to him? Or had it been Burn? Either of them – why? To torture? To gloat, to hurt and harm worse? To dance on his grave to the tune of the Wedding March, or the Death March: Here comes the Died –

“Is anyone sitting here?” somebody asked, under the laborious syntho-bass and drums.

“No,” said the Ghost. As ever, he recognized his cue. He knew exactly when to leave. Invaluable, that, in an actor, perfect timing.

~*~

“That’s the bloody weird part,” said one uniformed man to another,

“Several people apparently saw Haine. At least, early on, even three or four hours later. One girl said he had a really cool white shirt – and she described this shirt – and it was the one he was wearing. I saw it on him myself.”

“Yeah,” said the other uniform, “And that guy – Stephen something – he said he really liked Haine’s copper wristband, asked him where he got it, but never had a reply.”

They drank their coffee. (The canteen never did it quite right, too frothy, not strong enough. Thank God in a few more hours there was a chance at Starbucks.

“Well, what I think,” said the first uniform, “he went to the reception, and then nipped home and finished up.”

“Yeah but – well, they’re hushing all this up, aren’t they? The SOCO, he was in a right state. Never saw him like that – and the T.O.D. –”

“It can’t be anything else, can it.” Flat as one more cold slate, these words. “And a wedding – all of them drinking. People see what they expect to. Even she –”

“Yeah. Ms Franken.”

“She’s Mrs Burnley now.”

“Yeah, well, whatever. She said she saw Haine. Said she was amazed he was there. She agreed she sent him an invite, but she meant him to take that as a warning, to let him know she had got hitched, and no hard feelings. Never reckoned he’d show.”

“Fucking slag,” said the first uniform.

“Took the words right out of my mouth,” agreed his companion. “Shall we hit the road?”

They had been called to the premises, (Haine’s flat) around midnight of the same evening that Joli Franken and Burnley held their Wedding Party at the Black Horse. And the party, in fact, had still been in full swing on the other side of London. It was a classic clue that alerted the people in the flat below Haine’s (flats – each one room; with a scrawny kitchenette and a shared toilet down the passage). The clue was reminiscent of Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles – that was, blood seeping through the ceiling above. The lot downstairs found it on returning from the pub, supposing it red paint at first. But as it kept on spreading they didn’t want it in their take-away. Very wise.

The corpse was sitting upstairs, in a good suit and a really good white shirt. He hadn’t fallen off his chair, just leaned a bit. He had swallowed half a bottle of a choice red wine, and about twenty-three generally-prescribed sleeping tablets. He had also cut open the vein of his left wrist with a razor-blade, very, very efficiently, slicing longways not across, which was a pretty infallible method. There were no preliminary hesitant scratches or cuts, either. Matthew Haine had known exactly what he meant to do, and had done it with the adroitness of an actor who had, reasonably often, acted suicide on the stage.

He was recently bathed, and his hair washed. He was deodorized, shaved, and with a touch of mid-range cologne. The clothes, as stated, were of good quality. And he had somehow managed, even when consciousness departed, to keep the blood off them. He really had been got up for a party. It was just that he hadn’t gone to it. Or had he? This was the nagging question; except, of course, you did not want to ask it. He had died. And Time of Death was now established as being, at the latest, seven o’clock that evening. And so, when he walked into the Black Lion Hotel Dining Room – he could not have done so. He was already that smart, clean corpse which had drugged and bled the life out of itself, in the room whose door the police broke down at midnight.

The ‘copper wristband’ spotted at the party was uncomfortable too. Those that subsequently mentioned it soon tried to brush it off their awareness. Because it might, in some sordid supernatural tale, have been an accurate cipher for Haine’s blood-starved, blood-encrusted wrist. A lot of the guests had thought him very pale. “Dishy,” one girl said, “sort of goth-vampire.” Here and there one or two of them had been noting Haine as late as 11.30. And then – he just hadn’t seemed to be there. He was gone.

So. If you could credit the idea, even if never? never ever would you truly credit the idea as a fact – Matthew Haine had killed himself, and then arrived as a stone-dead ghost at the wedding party. The Ultimate Spectre at the Feast.

He hadn’t left a farewell message. There was just the invitation to the reception tucked in the breast pocket of his jacket - which, when they broke in the door, fell out and landed a few inches clear of the water-fall of spent blood. Very gracious it was, the invite. And almost just like all the other invites sent to all the other 300 odd guests. His name was spelled out in curlicues, and led to such phrases as: Love to welcome you and Happy celebration, addressing the recipient, at the end, as ‘Our valued Guest’. Yes, that was really the stumbling block, the problem. Matthew Haine – and who else would have done such a thing? – had, before placing the card in his pocket, changed two letters in those last three words. Crossing out the ‘u’ and the ‘e’ in the word Guest, he had rewritten them as an ‘h’ and an ‘o’. Which accordingly left the invitation to read, significantly or not, ‘Our valued Ghost.’

The Scariest Place in the World

Mark Morris

Holly resented daytime callers. Most of them weren’t to know that she worked at home, but even so, her first response when someone rang the bell or banged on the door was to grit her teeth and ball her hands into fists, as if in imitation of the tight knot of resentment she felt clenching in her belly. It had been several weeks after moving in before the old lady who lived next door got the message. The first time she turned up she’d been clutching a dented biscuit tin containing one of those old-fashioned sponge cakes, the ones with jam and cream in the middle and a light dusting of icing sugar on top.

“Hello, dear,” she’d said, her thin shoulders hunched like vestigial wings within her pale green cardigan and her grey hair drifting like a wind-stirred mass of cobwebs. “I’m Mrs Bartholomew. I’m your new neighbour – or rather, I suppose you’re mine, as I’ve been here for donkey’s years. I just thought I’d pop round to see how you’re settling in.”

Holly had kept the door half-closed, and positioned herself firmly behind it, as if wary the old lady might try to force her way inside. When Mrs Bartholomew smiled, her face crumpled like a brown paper bag and her beige-yellow teeth sprang forward, reminding Holly of a row of clothes pegs on a washing line.

“We’re fine, thanks,” Holly had replied, responding to her neighbour’s grin with a half-hearted grimace. “We’re a bit busy right now. Lots to do.”

She’d begun to push the door shut. Quickly the old woman said, “Just the two of you are there?”

Holly had hesitated, then nodded. “Yes, me and my husband, Mike.”

“No children?”

“No.”

“Ah.” The old woman looked thoughtful. “Well, it’ll be a lovely house to bring up little ones. When the time comes.”

“Yes.” Holly inched the door further closed. “Well, thanks for coming round, but we really are busy.”

“Oh, I brought you this.” Mrs Bartholomew raised the biscuit tin as though making an offering to an arcane god. “A little house-warming present. Homemade.”

Holly had thought of the old woman’s bird’s-claw, liver-spotted hands buried in cake mix, perhaps even scraping it from under her yellowing fingernails, and her stomach turned over. Mustering a smile she’d said, “That’s very kind of you, but Mike and I don’t really eat cake.”

“Oh.” Mrs Bartholomew looked crest-fallen.

“Sorry,” said Holly. “Well, goodbye.”

She’d pushed the door shut, and then tensed as, from the other side, she heard the old woman call, “Goodbye for now, dear. Perhaps I’ll pop round again when you’re less busy.”

She had popped round again. In fact, she had ‘popped round’ on at least half a dozen occasions over the next few weeks, though Holly had never allowed her over the threshold. In the end Holly was forced to tell her that she worked from home, that her time was precious, that she had deadlines to meet, and that she couldn’t afford to just break off whenever she felt like it. Her voice, when she’d said this, had been a little snappier than she’d intended, and she’d felt bad about it afterwards, thinking that the old woman was probably just lonely and wanted a bit of company. But still… Her neighbour had to respect the fact that Holly needed to make a living. She had to understand that just because Holly was at home all day it didn’t mean that her time was her own to squander on coffee and local gossip. And when Holly did get time to herself, in the evenings, she wanted to spend it with Mike – which was natural, wasn’t it? They had things to do on the house, after all, plans to discuss.

She soothed her conscience by promising herself that at some point, when things had settled down and they were more on top of the situation, she would call on Mrs Bartholomew and say hello properly. She would. But just now she was too busy, too preoccupied. And besides, if the old lady had lived on the street for donkey’s years, then surely she had other friends to call on? It wasn’t as if Holly and Mike ought to feel responsible for her in any way.

Which was why, when the knock came on the front door one Tuesday morning, just as Holly was dropping a camomile teabag into the flip top bin in the kitchen and trying to structure the next sentence of her latest article in her head, she felt that familiar knot in her belly tightening once more. Who was this now? Surely not Mrs Bartholomew again? Perhaps it was one of those ex-prisoners selling shoddy and over-priced household wares from a leather holdall – the ones who always made her feel nervous. Or just someone delivering a parcel. Mike was always ordering himself the latest gadgets online. She’d told him to have them delivered to his work address so that she wouldn’t be disturbed during the day, but sometimes he forgot.

Pushing open the kitchen door, steaming mug held before her like a weapon, she looked to her right, moving her head slowly, a little fearful of making a sudden move and drawing attention to herself. She didn’t think whoever was standing outside would be able to see her, but you never knew. After all, she could see the caller through the stippled glass panel of the front door – or at least, she could see a vague dark shape with a pinkish blob on top.

She hovered a moment, willing the caller to go away. If it was someone with a parcel he’d put an attempted delivery slip through the letterbox, whereupon she could rush up to the door and open it before he’d reached the end of the drive, claim she’d been preoccupied with some household chore and hadn’t been able to get to the door in time.

But the caller didn’t put a note through the door. Instead he knocked again. Three quick taps, timid but insistent. If she’d been upstairs, sitting at her desk, she might have ignored it, but she was damned if she was going to stand in her hallway all day, feeling trapped.

With a grunt of exasperation she marched up to the front door and opened it. Standing outside was a thin young man in a dark jacket, jeans and a white T-shirt with some sort of fuzzy, black-lettered slogan on it that Holly could neither read nor identify. He looked like a student – bony wrists, thick mop of fashionably tousled hair, insipid expression.

“Yes?” she said sharply.

“Hi,” he said with a vague smile.

Holly didn’t smile back. “Can I help you?”

“Er…” The young man looked ill at ease. He wafted a hand vaguely. “This is a bit weird, but… I used to live here. A long time ago. I was in the area, so I thought… well, it was just a whim really. I just got an urge to see the old place. The house where I grew up.” He grimaced. “I haven’t been back in… I dunno… nearly twenty years? My name’s Rob, by the way. Rob Norton.” He nodded at the side wall of the house next door. “Is Mrs Bartholomew still there?”

“Yes,” Holly said.

Rob Norton smiled. “That’s good. It’s nice to know that some things never change.”

Holly narrowed her eyes. “When did you say you lived here?”

“I didn’t. The 70s. I was born in ‘78. We lived here till I was eighteen.” Nodding at the expression on Holly’s face, he said, “I know what you’re thinking. I get it a lot. But I’m older than I look.” He gestured vaguely at the house. “Any chance I could have a quick look round?”

“I don’t think so,” said Holly quickly. “I’m very busy. I’ve got a deadline to meet. I’m a journalist.”

He pressed the palms of his hands together, as if in prayer. “Please. Just five minutes. Two even. It’s been such a long time since I’ve been back, and I don’t know when I’ll be in the area again.”

“How do I know you’re who you say you are?” Holly asked.

Rob Norton flourished a hand almost triumphantly at the house next door, like a stage compere introducing a popular act. “You can ask Mrs B. She’ll vouch for me. She knew me from when I was a baby.”

Holly pictured it all in an instant, saw immediately how protracted and awkward the situation would become. They would knock on Mrs Bartholomew’s door, and the old lady would answer it. And when she clapped eyes on her old neighbour her face would light up with incredulity and delight. No doubt there’d be a joyous reunion, a babble of questions. Mrs Bartholomew would invite them in for a cup of tea, and Holly would have to play the killjoy, the party pooper, would – as usual – have to plead the pressure of work and deadlines. So she’d come home, and Rob would probably stay at Mrs Bartholomew’s for a bit. And even though Holly wasn’t with them, she’d be unable to settle to her work, because she’d be on edge, waiting for Rob to come back, knowing not only that at some point she’d be disturbed by him again, but also that next door they’d probably be talking about her – Mrs B telling Rob how unfriendly she was, how un-neighbourly, how she wished things were back to how they used to be, when he and his family lived next door.

Holly didn’t think she could stand all that – the time wasted, the disruption to her schedule, the uncomfortable knowledge that she’d be painted as the villain of the piece. And so she heard herself saying, “Oh, it’s okay, there’s no need for that. You can have a look round. But it will have to be quick. I do have a deadline.”

“Of course,” Rob said, nodding. “Thanks so much. I really appreciate it.”

Holly stepped back, tugging the door open reluctantly so that he could enter. He came in, looking around eagerly, peering up the hallway, towards the kitchen, his dark eyes gleaming, the light slithering across them.

Holly took another step back as he closed the door behind him, trapping the shadows and the silence in with them. Outside he’d seemed harmless, skinny, almost frail, but here, inside, right next to her, he seemed taller, rangier, lithe rather than skinny, possessed perhaps of a deceptive strength, a tensile vigour.

What am I doing? she thought. If Mike knew he’d be furious. She wondered if she’d tell him. She knew what he’d say, could almost hear him saying it:

“How could you have been so gullible? Anything might have happened.”

You read about these things, don’t you? Strangers wheedling their way into people’s homes. And you think: serves them right for being so stupid. But it’s different when it’s you. After all, you’re not a newspaper headline; other people are. You’re too smart, too careful.

“Where do you want to start?” she asked.

Her voice was a little abrasive. Too abrasive? She didn’t want to antagonise him. Better to be businesslike, though, rather than demure, defensive. The worst thing would be to appear vulnerable, to show any nervousness, any fear.

“This was all wood-panelled when I was a kid,” he said, his eyes sparkling. “Well, not wood-panelled… you know that cheap stuff? Thin. It came in sheets and you just stuck it on the wall.” He gave a sudden laugh, little more than a hitch of breath. “Pretty tacky, I suppose. But people thought it was sophisticated back then.”

He sidled past her, away from her, towards the door on the left that led into the front room. “Is it okay if I…?”

She nodded, and he opened the door, pausing before he did so and taking a deep breath as he turned the handle – relishing the moment, or perhaps bracing himself for what he might see.

She guessed that the room must have changed a lot since he had lived here, been redecorated and refurnished several times over. Perhaps even rewired, the light fittings repositioned, the windows replaced. Yet he stood there looking around with a kind of wonder. She saw that he was trembling slightly.

“Are you all right?” she asked to break the silence.

His eyelids fluttered, as if he was about to pass out. He turned his head so slowly towards her she almost expected to hear the bones creak in his neck.

He licked his lips. “I can’t tell you how strange this is,” he said. “It’s like… somewhere I’ve seen in a recurring dream. Or like I’ve been asleep for a long time and I’ve just woken up.” He shook his head suddenly. “Sorry. You must think I’m a total weirdo. It’s just… It’s hard to explain. Everything is so familiar… intensely familiar. And yet at the same time it’s different. Like a new reality has been laid over the top… Does any of this make sense?”

Holly was a forward-looking person. She was not nostalgic. She had never had any desire to revisit the past, to explore old haunts. Last year she had been invited to a school reunion but had declined; the very idea of it made her shudder. Yet she found herself nodding now, to humour him. “It must be very odd coming back,” she said.

“It is.” He swayed a little on his feet. “Sorry, could I have some water?”

“Sure.” He wasn’t the only one who found the atmosphere stifling; she was glad of the opportunity to step away from it for a moment. “Sit down. I’ll get you some.”

She exited the room, hurried to the kitchen, opened the cupboard above the sink and reached instinctively for a glass. Then she thought better of it and took down a plastic beaker instead.

It was becoming heavier in her hand as she filled it with water when a shadow crept across the wall and the cupboard door in front of her. She turned with a gasp, water splashing over her hand.

He was standing right behind her.

“What are you doing?” she cried, immediately appalled at how shrill she sounded.

He backed off, raising a hand. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you jump.” His attention seemed suddenly caught by the room, his eyes flickering from wall to wall, floor to ceiling.

“Strange how small this room seems now,” he said. “How narrow.”

She felt oddly insulted. “It’s plenty big enough for us,” she said.

He smiled crookedly. “I just meant… When I was a kid this seemed… not vast, but… bigger, you know? Everything seems bigger when you’re a kid, doesn’t it? More formidable.” He looked out of the narrow window beside the cooker. “I used to think that field out there was massive. But it’s not, is it?”

“You sound disappointed.” Holly was still holding the beaker. Water was dripping from her hand, forming dark coins on the slate-coloured tiles at her feet.

“Not disappointed,” said Rob. “Just…” he looked thoughtful, even sad. “The older you get, the more the world closes in on you. Stifles you.”

Holly didn’t agree. She thought the opposite was true. But she didn’t argue. She held out the beaker. “Do you want your water?”

“Thanks.” He took the beaker, but he didn’t drink. “Is it okay to look upstairs? My old bedroom.”

“Sure,” she said, and raised a hand. “After you.” She hoped her reason for inviting him to go first – because she didn’t want to feel trapped with him; because she knew that if he stayed ahead of her she would always have an escape route – wasn’t as evident to him as it seemed to herself.

He turned obediently enough, and as he did so he put the beaker down on the breakfast bar that ran along the left-hand wall of the kitchen. She looked at it, thought about saying something. But why make it an issue? Was it really such a big deal that he hadn’t drunk the water he’d asked for? Maybe he’d changed his mind. People were entitled to do that. Maybe his feeling of faintness had passed.

She followed him up the stairs, though remained a good few steps behind him. She didn’t want to get close enough that he could thrust out an arm and give her a shove. He moved slowly, deliberately, as if wary of disturbing a sleeping incumbent on the floor above. Two steps from the top he halted and turned. When he spoke his voice was sombre, hushed.

“That first door was my bedroom. Is it okay if I…?”

“Be my guest.”

He ascended the last two steps, crossed the landing, pushed the door open. It was her study, so the door was already ajar. Pearly light spilled out of it as he stepped forward, softening his outline. When she entered the room behind him he had already crossed to the window beside her desk and was looking at the paved yard below.

“I thought you might have turned it into a garden again,” he said. He sounded wistful, disappointed.

“Again?”

He turned to her. His eyes were wide and soft. He looked… haunted? Was that too strong a word to describe the expression on his face?

“When we came here it was a garden. Lawn. Flowerbeds. Then my parents… my dad really… began to breed dogs. Alsations. And he had the lawn ripped out, paved over. I thought… I hoped… it might be green again by now.”

“It was like that when we moved in,” Holly said defensively. “We haven’t been here long.”

Rob seemed not to hear her. His gaze swept the poky, square room, little more than a cell really. “This was my room.”

“Yes, you said.”

His eyes fixed on her. They were dark, almost black. And seemed suddenly flat. “You know what a little boy’s bedroom is, don’t you?”

She shrugged, discomfited. “What?”

“It’s the scariest place in the world.”

A beat. A silence in which meaning thrummed and throbbed, like the air beneath an electricity pylon.

“Is it?” she said at last, and to her own ears her voice sounded hollow, on the verge of cracking.

He nodded. “He dominated us… my dad, I mean. He never touched us, my mum and me, but we were scared of him all the same. He had a way about him… a way of grinding us down…”

His eyes drifted away from hers, becoming unfocused. She knew he was looking into his past. “Some people do. There’s a force about them… a sense that… that something terrible could happen at any moment… Do you know what I mean?”

Holly wasn’t sure what to say. Yet she felt compelled to say something. In the end she muttered, “You felt threatened?”

“More than that. I was scared… terrified… every minute of every day of my life.”

His voice had dropped to a whisper. Suddenly he shook himself, like a dog. His head jerked up and his eyes were bright and black again.

“Have you seen him?”

“What?”

“Have you seen anything? Since you moved in? Anything… unusual?”

“No.” She shook her head angrily. “What do you expect me to have seen?”

He half-smiled. “I used to see… even after he died…”

“He died?” said Holly. “Your dad, you mean?”

He nodded. “His car was hit by a lorry on the motorway. I was eleven. I cried, and Mum cried, but secretly… I was glad. Relieved. I think she was too, but she didn’t say so. But then…” His eyes drifted, not to the window, but to the corner of the room beyond the window, the one where Holly kept her exercise bike when she wasn’t using it. His voice had dropped to a whisper again, and his eyes were full of fear now. “Then he came back. I’d see him at night. I’d wake up and he’d be standing there. A dark shape in the corner. Watching me.”

“It was just your imagination,” said Holly carefully. “You felt guilty, and afraid.”

He looked bewildered. “So you haven’t seen him?”

“Of course not.”

He nodded slowly. “I couldn’t wait to get away. When I did, when I moved out, I thought it’d be over, that I’d never see him again.” He gave a sort of sob, and his face twisted for a moment, an expression of fearful anguish. “But it was no good. He followed me. Wherever I went, wherever I lived, I’d wake in the night, and he’d be there, standing in the corner, watching me…”

He swayed, as though about to collapse. Standing beside the window, framed by the light, he looked ethereal, as though the blaze of his own fear was corroding him, devouring him.

Against her better judgement, Holly stepped forward, raising her hands as though to grip his elbows, hold him upright.

“He’s not real, Rob, don’t you see?” she said. “You only think you saw him because he was such a presence in your life, because he frightened you, and because you felt guilty for being relieved when he died. But you mustn’t let him haunt you any more. He’s gone. You’re free of him.”

Rob shook his head. “I thought if I came back, I might be able to bring him with me, leave him here, lay him to rest.”

“Do that,” said Holly decisively. “Leave him here. He has no power over me. I don’t believe in him.”

Rob barely seemed to hear her. His eyes were wild, distracted. “But it’s no good,” he said. “He’ll always be with me. I see that now.”

“No he won’t,” said Holly. “You just have to –”

Her words dried in her throat, her body jerking in horror. Rob had produced a black-handled kitchen knife from his pocket and was now holding it uncertainly in front of him.

Holly’s voice, when she rediscovered it, was eerily calm, far calmer than she felt. “Rob,” she said, “put that away. You don’t need it.”

“He won’t leave me alone,” he said miserably.

“But that won’t solve anything, will it? By… by using that… you’d be letting him win.”

Though she said it, she had no idea how he intended to use it. On her? On himself? On his non-existent father? She backed towards the door, not deliberately, almost subconsciously.

He looked at her and his face was wretched. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Then he rammed the blade of the knife in his own throat and jerked it sideways.

It was like puncturing a high pressure hose. There was a hiss and a fan of blood spurted from him, rising high in the air and coming down with a spatter like falling raindrops. He reeled and tumbled sideways, his legs simply folding beneath him. Blood continued to gush and jet from his neck as his body bucked, staining everything – the sand-coloured carpet, the walls, the bookcases, the laptop on the desk, even the ceiling – with streaks and spatters.

Holly crammed her fists to her mouth and screamed. She felt a wrench and a wave of dizziness, as though some instinctive, essential part of her was so appalled by what it was witnessing that it was trying to flee, to tear itself from the unresponsive lump of flesh in which it was housed. Barely aware of what she was doing, she turned and stumbled, almost fell, down the stairs. The air felt thick and heavy as soup, and yet at the same time vibrant and piercing, as if filled with a thousand screeching alarms.

“Ohmygod,” she whispered, barely aware that she was doing it. “Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod.”

She couldn’t think straight. Her only thought was to get away, to put as much distance as possible between her and the terrible thing that had happened upstairs. She felt contaminated, poisoned by it. She rubbed and clawed at her arms, at her clothes, as if she was covered with crawling things that were biting her, trying to burrow under her skin.

At the bottom of the stairs she made instinctively for the light falling in fractured waves through the stippled glass of the front door. Her hand felt large and clumsy as she grasped the door handle, but somehow she managed to twist it, tug it open. She staggered outside, and the light hit her like a slap, causing her to spin around – or perhaps it was the world that was spinning. Next thing she knew her feet somehow became tangled together, and suddenly she was on the ground. She lay there sobbing.

When hands began to tug at her she screamed, but the voice that accompanied them was soft, soothing.

“Now, now, dear, it’s all right. You’re perfectly safe.”

Holly looked up. Mrs Bartholomew was crouching beside her, the sun turning her feathery grey hair into a halo of white fire.

“You’ve got to… need an ambulance,” Holly spluttered.

“An ambulance?” Mrs Bartholomew looked her over quickly. “Are you hurt? What happened?”

“Not me – him,” Holly wailed.

“Who, dear?” asked Mrs Bartholomew.

Holly’s thoughts were racing, hurtling through her head at such a speed she could barely communicate. Forcing herself to think, to concentrate, she said, “You know him. His name’s… Rob Norton. He used to… used to live here.”

A strange look came over Mrs Bartholomew’s face. “Rob,” she said. “So he’s come back, has he?”

“Yes, but he’s… hurt. Maybe dead. He had a knife and he…” unable to say the words she mimed stabbing herself in the throat.

Slowly Mrs Bartholomew rose to her feet, wincing as her knees cracked. She took hold of Holly’s hand, and with a tug she encouraged her to stand.

“Come with me, dear.”

“Where?”

“I want to show you something.”

Holly stood shakily, but resisted when Mrs Bartholomew started to pull her back towards the open front door that Holly had just tumbled out of.

“No,” she said, “I can’t. He’s in there. I don’t want to see.”

“It’s quite all right,” Mrs Bartholomew said. “Come on, dear.”

Such was the gentle authority in her voice that Holly allowed herself to be led. Inside, though, when Mrs Bartholomew tried to persuade her to go upstairs, she shrank back again.

“No, I can’t,” she said again.

“All right, dear,” Mrs Bartholomew said gently. “All right, I’ll go. You wait here.”

She went upstairs. Holly waited, slumped against the wall – the one that Rob had told her used to be covered in sheets of chipboard made to look like real wood – panting as though she had just run a five-miler.

Eventually Mrs Bartholomew appeared at the top of the stairs. “Come up, dear,” she said.

Holly shook her head. “No.”

“There’s nothing to see,” Mrs Bartholomew said. “Trust me.”

Such was the conviction in her tone, combined with a note of reassurance, that Holly sidled across to the foot of the stairs and crept up them like a timid child ready to bolt at the slightest sign of threat. When she reached the top Mrs Bartholomew took her hand.

“It’s all right,” she said gently.

The door to the room in which Rob Norton had cut his own throat was ajar. Holly flinched, and almost cried out, as Mrs Bartholomew stepped towards it, holding her at arm’s length, and pushed it open.

The door swung back. The room was empty. Holly stared. There was no blood, no body. Everything was as it should be.

She felt her mind flex. That was honestly how it felt.

“I’m going mad,” she whispered.

Mrs Bartholomew shook her head. “No, dear, you’re not.”

“But he was there. I saw him. I spoke to him.”

“I’m sure you did. But he died a long time ago. 1997 to be exact. He never got over his father’s death, and he came back and killed himself in his childhood bedroom. I expect it was the only place where he felt safe.”

“No.” Holly shook her head. “He didn’t feel safe here. He said it was the scariest place in the world.”

Mrs Bartholomew looked sad. “He’s been back several times. Everyone who’s lived here since Kath Norton moved out has seen him – spoken to him too. Only once, mind,” she added hastily. “He never visits the same person twice.”

Holly looked round the room. The pristine laptop, its cursor blinking languidly on the last word she had written. The sand-coloured carpet. The white ceiling, fresh and newly-painted. Her eyes moved past the window to the corner, where her exercise bike stood at an angle.

Who will I see at night, she thought. Who will I see standing there?

She didn’t believe in that sort of thing. She didn’t believe in ghosts. But from now on, whenever she came in here in the dark, she would see someone. She felt certain of it. She would see a tall, dark shape, standing there, watching her.

She knew that she would never be alone again.

Simon Harries

Robert Shearman

A basic problem with early photography was its inability to hold the image of cats. Nicephore Niepce’s process of taking a metal plate coated with bitumen and bombarding it with light was quite the discovery, of course, and the further pioneering efforts by Daguerre and Talbot to develop this technique were of huge influence. For the first time in history there really was the sense that a moment in time could be frozen forever, that people and places and events could be preserved accurately. It gave us a glimpse of something godlike, something immortal. We drew a blank with cats, though.

Dogs were all right. There was something so essentially noble and straightforward about a dog, it would have been an offence to the sensibilities had dogs not been photographed. And, although it took a bit of fiddling with the lenses, by the late 1870s it had become increasingly easy to capture the likeness of horses as well. But no one had successfully managed to hold a cat upon film; there were various (unsubstantiated) reports from experimental ‘graphers that they had done so (and on the continent, always on the continent!) – only for a little while, and blurred maybe, not a good likeness, though quite definitely feline. But the image never held long enough for anyone to verify these claims; the cats faded away from the pictures within seconds.

Some said it was because the cat had no soul. Others, that it was simply too minor a lifeform, too low down upon the table of creation for the camera to recognise. And some people – the ones who actually owned cats, who knew what they were about, knew their moods and their characters – said that the cats were doing it deliberately. Cats had no interest in their images being preserved on paper via a collusion of light and oil. What was in it for them?

For the sake of simplicity we had long claimed that the photography of cats was impossible, but that didn’t mean we thought it was actually, genuinely, impossible; no one believed that, I think, except perhaps Gerard Pomfrey, but his fustian ideas about the photosciences had long since been discredited. I was certain that the solution was out there, somewhere. It would be a long voyage of discovery for someone. That someone was not going to be me. I don’t like cats. I was not prepared to devote my hard-earned photoscopic skills to them.

I still don’t know why it was me that Simon Harries contacted. We had studied at Oxford together, and I remember that back then his views on the inconstancy of calotypes from silver salt solutions were regarded as mildly controversial. But Harries was not the man for controversy, he had neither the charisma nor the gall to carry it off. I had had respect for Harries, I could see there was talent within him, and I think maybe I was the closest he had to a friend – but, still, we were not friends, not by any stretch of the definition, and I had neither heard from him nor of him since we’d graduated fifteen years before. I can hardly describe the surprise I felt when I received his telegram, let alone my surprise at the contents of that message.

~*~

He asked me to visit him at his house in South London that very evening – promptly, at half past eleven. He had something of vital importance to show me. There was no hint in his words that we had had no communication for so long, there was no greeting or attempt at reintroduction, it was as if we had been working side by side in the same laboratory every day. I was half inclined to ignore the thing, but for the urgency of the final sentence. He urged me to come alone, and to tell no one – and I confess, I was intrigued.

I had a light supper, and then caught a hansom cab to Streatham. I hadn’t been south of the Thames for a while, and I had forgotten just how much poverty there was to the place. I don’t know how man can live in such slum conditions. Still, I was surprised when the cab dropped me off, the driver himself looking eager to get back to the civilising areas of the city and only too relieved when I told him he had no reason to wait. I had thought that Harries must have found some decent lodgings here, however cheap; but this was not a house, this was a garret, there wasn’t even a doorknocker, I had to beat on the door with my fists. Photography was a science studied by gentlemen; this was not a place where a gentleman could live; what had happened to Harries to bring him so low?

Harries opened the door and showed me in. I would not have recognised him. He had aged. His hair was grey. He had not shaven. His cravat was askew. “What is all this about, Harries?” I asked. I felt I had the right to be a little abrupt.

His eyes wouldn’t settle on me, they darted about nervously.

“You came alone?”

“As you can see.”

“And you have spoken to no one?”

“You try my patience, man.”

“Forgive me,” he said, and he smiled, and he grasped my hands in his, and shook them briefly, and he began to giggle. “I see so few people nowadays. Oh! but I have done it. I have done it! It is the discovery of the age!”

He lived in one room, I could see, and that a small one; over the floor were papers; over the papers were sheets of acetate, broken or chipped lenses, dyes, gels, scraps of stale food. “I have ‘graphed a cat,” he whispered to me, eyes shining.

I felt no personal affection for Harries, but I was nonetheless sorry that a man of such potential had gone down such a scientific blind alley. He could see the disappointment on my face; I confess, I did not try to disguise it; he grabbed on to my arm, tight. He said, “I’ve done it, I tell you!”

“Then let me see,” I said.

And then he was smiling again, a crafty little smile, I did not like that smile much. “Oho, not yet! Not yet! Not until midnight! The cats only come out at the witching hour, you’ll see, you’ll see.” And he cleared the debris off the only chair, and invited me to sit down.

A little before twelve, he fetched for me a ‘graph. He’d taken a picture of the room. He had taken it from the chair, I think, from the exact place I was sitting. The books were in slightly different positions, maybe, I saw a pile of photoscientific treatises that had since then toppled over. “There’s nothing here,” I said – “Not yet, not yet,” he insisted, “I tell you, midnight!” And I looked hard at the picture, and so did he, and that’s how we spent the next few minutes. I felt ridiculous.

The clock struck. Loud, too loud. “Sorry, sorry,” said Harries, “I make sure I can never sleep through it. But look, look, on the ‘graph!” And I was looking at the ‘graph, and of course, I expected to see nothing, and there would be an end to this. I even opened my mouth to say so; I shut it again.

For wasn’t there something swimming into focus? Wasn’t there a blur, and the blur was taking on a more rigid outline, and then a solid shape. “My God,” I said, and I apologise, but I was that surprised. Because there, looking out of the picture, indubitably, was a cat. Looking out at me. It looked as shocked as I was. Its eyes were wide in the flash light, its ears were pricked, its fur was standing on edge.

“But it must be a trick,” I said. “Simon? Is this not some small child you have dressed up as a cat, or...?”

“I have the proof!” he laughed. “Ha ha, I have proof!” And at that he threw aside a few more papers, and lifted from the floor the cat itself. He picked it up by the tail. Its face was set in the exact same expression I saw in the ‘graph, its fur still set fast and rigid.

“Dead,” I said, uselessly.

“Dead, yes, ha ha, it always kills ‘em, don’t know why!” said Harries. “Normally they just die, ha ha, and there’s nothing to show for it. But this time I set the exposure right! I got the picture! The cat didn’t die in vain!”

“And how long have you been doing this?” I asked.

He waved his hand as if it were a matter of utter irrelevance; and, I suppose, to him it was. “There are lots of cats on the streets, sniffing around the waste is a good place to find ‘em. Sometimes they claw and bite,” and I could see now, yes, there were marks all over his arms, little scars on his cheeks, “but I’m bigger than ‘em, ha ha, they’re no match for me! I take ‘em here, and I ‘graph ‘em, and I get rid of ‘em, and their bodies end up so frozen hard they sink straight to the bottom of the river! But I kept this one, he’s my little pet, my little boy. I’m proud of him. He’s made me a success, yes, he has, he’s made me all proper and worthwhile.” And he actually stroked at the dead cat’s stiffened fur.

“And what do you want of me?” I asked. And I felt a chill, as if I thought he might want to take a photograph of me, he would rob the life from me and set me down on film – but that was silly, no harm had ever come to a human being from being ‘graphed, I was not an animal.

“You have a Reputation,” said Harries, and he said it like that, with a capital R. “You are a good man. People will listen to you. I charge you to bring my discovery to the world.”

“No,” I said. I didn’t even know I was going to refuse him until I spoke, but the refusal came out immediately, as if all my instincts were revolting against him, as if my intellect knew I wanted no part of this before my mouth did.

“Why not?” he said, and for a second he scrunched his hands into fists and something dark passed over his face – then he relaxed, his face slumped back into the same failed despondency I had known from Oxford.”Why not?” he said again, meek and defeated.

“I am a man of science,” I said, “and I duly believe that the purpose of science is to better mankind. And I can see no betterment that comes from the photography of cats, not whether they are alive or dead.”

I did not want to leave on such a terse note, and so endeavoured to make some light talk with Harries about his health and the weather, but neither of our hearts were in it, and I soon gave up and took a cab home.

~*~

Three weeks later Simon Harries was dead. The police came to my house and asked whether I could help them with their enquiries, and at first I thought they meant I was implicated, and I was fully prepared to get quite angry about the matter. But they assured me that wasn’t the case, and made apologies, and spoke to me with such due deference that I fetched my coat and my hat and agreed to go with them.

They took me to Harries’ lodgings. In the middle of the room, spread over his papers, was a body, I presumed Harries’, covered with a sheet. I recoiled at that, but not at the sight of death, just at the insensitive way in which I’d been allowed to see it.

“Sorry, sir,” said the constable on duty. “We’ve tried to move it, but it weighs a ton, and that’s a fact.” He showed me a box. He told me it had been left for me, and indeed, it had my name and address written upon the side.

“Would you like me to open this?” I asked, and the policeman said it would be a blessing for ‘em if I didn’t mind.

I could not imagine why Harries would leave me anything. Inside the box I found his camera, and a dozen or so photographs. The camera was old and outmoded, I dare say he’d never had the funds to purchase a better one; I had no need of it, I had several cameras of my own at home. The photographs were an odd mix; some of them, I assume, had been taken by Harries; some of them, like the portrait of Queen Victoria, no doubt rescued from a newspaper, definitely weren’t.

At the bottom of the box I found an envelope. I opened it.

“Can’t Stop Them Now,” was all it said.

It was an unhelpful note, one of vagueness and imprecision, and unworthy of an Oxford graduate. And I understood why Simon Harries had managed no better than a lower second.

The constable said, “Begging your pardon, would you look at the body, sir? It’s got us properly stumped, and you’re a man of science and all.” I pointed out that my science was photography not medicine, but accepted after further pleading that I was still the best qualified scientist there, and permitted them to present me the corpse.

The sheet was removed. In death Harries looked larger, swollen somehow, as if he’d been the victim of drowning – though his body, naturally enough, was perfectly dry. That he was peculiarly bloated was not the most disturbing thing about him – it was more that his mouth was open, wide open, opened wider than I thought a mouth could stretch.

“For heaven’s sake,” I said, “give the man some dignity. At least shut the mouth!” And the constable said to me his men had tried to do just that, but the mouth wouldn’t shut; “The jaws have got stuck somehow, sir.” So I had a go. I put on my gloves, and reached out to Harries’ face. I saw as I neared it there were fresh scratches upon his cheeks. I pulled on the chin, but it was indeed stiff. For a moment I thought his body had frozen hard like the carcass of the cat he had shown me – but no, I pulled harder, and I could feel some give – I admit, I was none too gentle about it, and at last the hinges of the jaws gave way to my bidding and the mouth snapped tight shut.

“Thanking you, sir,” said the constable.

“That’s all I can do, I’m afraid,” I said. “This death goes beyond the knowledge afforded me by photoscopic theory. I’d say he didn’t die easily, though. Poor devil.”

~*~

Back home I perused the contents of the box once more.

There was nothing new to be gleaned from the enigmatic letter, so I destroyed it. I checked the camera; it had no film. I left it in the kitchen. It was junk, but I thought I might cannibalise it for parts.

I took the photographs up to my study. I sat in my favourite chair, drank a brandy.

Yes, some of them had clearly been taken by Harries. Two of them were of his own lodgings for a start, and I assumed they were failures from his cat experiments. But others seemed to be not of his hand at all, the style was wrong, the composition. There were pictures of empty anonymous streets. There were pictures of famous London landmarks, the one of St Paul’s Cathedral at dusk was especially striking. There was a man and a woman outside a church, all dressed up in their best – was it their wedding day? Or was it nothing of the sort? They looked uncomfortable, was that at the prospect of spending the rest of their lives together, or that someone was aiming a camera at them and stealing the moment and freezing it for his own ends and committing it to film and making it possible that strangers like me could finger at it and paw at it and stare at it without shame? There was Queen Victoria. She didn’t seem amused. I could see nothing to connect the pictures whatsoever. I tried to puzzle it over, but not too seriously; it wasn’t my mystery, after all, I didn’t have to care. I felt drowsy. I raised a glass to Harries, and toasted him. I meant it respectfully enough, but quite see it may have come out wrong.

I dozed.

And when I woke up, the fire was nearly out, and there was a crick in my neck, and I’d dropped the photographs all over the floor. I looked at the time – and it was on the verge of midnight – and then, soon enough, the grandfather clock downstairs began to chime. But that wasn’t what had stirred me, that started after I had woken, and it was as if there was a little alarm inside my head and it had gone off, it had made sure I was able to see all the fun...

The top photograph was of Harries’ room. And I stared at it. I didn’t want to stare at it. I didn’t want to see a dead cat shimmer into view. But I couldn’t take my eyes off it – and yes – soon enough – there it was, the outline, then filling in with more clarity, more depth – there was the cat, sure enough, its ‘graph taken at the very point of death. The previous cat had looked merely surprised. This one was angry.

And it wasn’t alone.

Because the picture continued to blur, now all around the fringes of it, I could see the blurring ripple beneath my fingers and I all but dropped the photograph, it buzzed to the touch. And there was a sound to it now, a whispering? A hissing. And more cats began to appear.

How many cats had Harries squeezed into his studio? What had he done?

There were a dozen – then there were more – then the picture was full of them; a hundred cats, a hundred and one, who could say? – big cats, kittens too, and all spilling out over each other, jostling for space, cramming themselves into every last crevice of space the picture could afford, blotting out the background of the room until all that could be seen was wall to wall cat.

And even though the picture was full, I could see that the ‘graph was blurring still, and the hissing was louder now, it was a seething – and there were still more cats being born, but there was no space for them, they were crushing the other cats now, they were bending themselves out of shape too, they were distorting, they were making themselves anew.

And still, still, the cats wouldn’t stop. And there was no light to the picture now, it was all just a mass of black, and the black was crying out, I knew that black wasn’t a void, it was anything but, it was the weight of all the cats in the world stuffed into an area no more than a few inches square, and still, still the cats wouldn’t stop.

And the other pictures.

There were cats piled up as high as St Paul’s Cathedral, they were choking up the River Thames. There were cats in the wedding dress, there were cats perched on top of the bridegroom’s hat, and pouring out from under his hat, and pouring out from under him. There was Queen Victoria, regal, unsmiling, and the cats were prodding at her face, they were prodding at her cheeks, they were forcing a smile out of her whether she liked it or not.

And I knew they were here. That the world was full of ghosts, stuffed together tight, and that we couldn’t see. But the camera could see. The camera could see the cats, at least. At least it could only see the cats.

I wanted to throw the photographs from me, get them away as far as I could. But I couldn’t move. And I felt something so heavy on my chest – and I knew they were there, all of them, all the cats who had ever died, all of them were sitting on me and crawling over me and trying to find somewhere warm to shelter away from the cold of extinction. I thought I couldn’t breathe. I thought I couldn’t breathe. Then, then I forced myself to my feet. And, of course, there was nothing pinning me down, of course there was no weight to shift – and, of course, nothing kicked and wailed and howled as it scattered to the floor.

I lit a candle. I went downstairs.

I had to get to the camera. To destroy it? I don’t know. To take pictures, lots of pictures, to fill the world with cats, say to everybody, look! look! this is where the dead go! Film that doesn’t show us what is really there, that gives us stories and fantasies instead, what use could that ever be?

And as I went down the stairs I imagined the cats beneath my feet would trip me up, and I held on to the banister rail so tightly. And I imagined my stepping on their tails, my treading down on their backs, the crunch of their bones breaking underfoot, the howls, the mews, the pitiful mews.

I entered the kitchen.

The camera was where I’d left it, on the table.

Wrapped around it – licking it, even? – was a cat. The fattest cat I had ever seen. Greasy too, its fur looked slick and oily and wet.

It bared its teeth at me.

“Get away!” I cried. “Get out of here!”

It wouldn’t take its eyes off me. It wouldn’t move from the camera.

“Didn’t you hear what I said? What do you want? Tell me what you want!” I was ready to bargain with a cat. And I threw the candle at it.

I didn’t aim at the cat directly. I think it knew that. I think that’s why it didn’t even flinch. The candlestick passed harmlessly overhead.

“Get out!” I said, and I mimed throwing something else, although I had nothing left to throw, and of course the cat could see that. But it yawned, it stretched. It gave me a look that I can only describe as reproachful. And then, slowly, in its own time, it slinked away from the camera. It dropped off the table, and for all its bulk landed lightly on its feet.

“You get away!” I said. But it was ignoring me now. I backed away as it trotted towards me, out of the door, out of the room.

I looked for it in the corridor, but it was dark now without the candle. I couldn’t see it. I went to the camera.

I was going to destroy it. But now I picked it up, I felt the urge to take photographs. What else is a camera for? No, I was going to destroy it. I was going to smash it down upon the table, now, hard, the glass would shatter, and all the ghosts would be locked away forever somewhere we couldn’t see.

And I saw there was film in it. There hadn’t been film earlier. I had checked. Who had put the film in?

I hesitated.

I took out the film, and had it developed.

~*~

I haven’t destroyed the camera.

I’ve told Cook to keep it in the kitchen. And if the cats get in, and sometimes they do, she is to remove them from the house. But she must be gentle with them. She must give them milk first, and treat them with respect.

I haven’t used the camera, either. Though one night I woke up, and I was downstairs, in the kitchen, and I was holding the camera with both hands. And I had never walked in my sleep before. I woke up in time, I went back upstairs, I locked my bedroom door. I keep the door locked every night now.

Maybe I’ll destroy the camera anyway. One day. We’ll see. I just don’t think that would make the cats very happy.

There are African tribes I’ve heard of, savages really, who don’t like the white man taking photographs of them. They fear that it takes their souls. But I worry that the reverse may be true. What if the camera brings a dead soul back? What if every picture confers a little immortality, and the world simply cannot support the weight of all those never-to-be-forgotten memories?

I destroyed the photograph that I had found in the camera. No one else need ever see that. For my part, though, it might as well still exist. For my part, I might as well have framed it, and hung it over my bed. It’s not as if I’ll ever forget what was in that photograph, not one single detail.

The picture was of Simon Harries. And I now know how he died. And I now know why his mouth was open so unnaturally wide, because there was something forcing the bulk of its entire body in. It knew what it was doing, too – the photograph had caught a little jaunty wave of the tail. And I don’t think it was the first that had crawled inside Harries’ mouth, I think that Harries’ bloated body was full of them.

And I remember how I had forced his jaws shut, and the resistance I felt, and I think I must have had that ghost body bitten clean through.

I’ll destroy the camera one day. I will. But for now, I treat all cats well, and I sleep with the door locked, and my mouth taped up.

~*~

No one can take photographs of babies either. Babies have no souls. But no one wants a picture of a baby.

About the Authors

Theresa Derwin has lived in Birmingham since birth and has held a variety of jobs, including warehouse packer, bar worker, being a (crap) waitress, various jobs in retail and admin, and a spell as a professional student. In 1999 she entered the civil service, but, thirteen years later, has now left to pursue a career as a writer.

Amanda Hemingway started writing stories when she could first write and long before she could spell. Published young, her work has covered a range of fiction from psychological thriller, romcom and neo-Gothic melodrama to her favourite genre, Science Fiction/Fantasy. Under the pen-name Jan Siegel she wrote the Prospero’s Children trilogy (available on Kindle and iPad), and she has a new fantasy novel out next year, The Devil’s Apprentice, first of a quartet (just for a change). She leads a gypsy existence between London and the country, and loves riding horses and hanging out with both humans and aliens.

Paul Kane is the award-winning and bestselling author of books such as The Arrowhead Trilogy, The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy and The Butterfly Man and Other Stories. He is co-editor of Hellbound Hearts and The Mammoth Book of Body Horror. His work has been optioned for film and television and his story “Dead Time” was adapted for the LionsGate/NBC show Fear Itself. His website – which has featured Guest Writers such as Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Charlaine Harris – can be found at: http://www.shadow-writer.co.uk

Kim Lakin-Smith’s dark fantasy and science fiction short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies including Black Static, Interzone, Celebration, Myth-Understandings, Further Conflicts, Pandemonium: Stories of the Apocalypse, Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories By Women, with “Johnny and Emmie-Lou Get Married” shortlisted for a BSFA Award in 2009. She is the author of the gothic fantasy Tourniquet; Tales from the Renegade City, the YA novella Queen Rat, and Cyber Circus, which has been shortlisted for both the 2012 BSFA Best Novel Award and the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel.

Tanith Lee was born in 1947, didn’t learn to read until she was nearly 8, and started to write aged 9. Since becoming a fulltime writer in 1974, she has written some 100 books, about 270 short stories, 4 radio plays and 2 episodes of Blake’s 7. Her latest publications include the novels Greyglass, To Indigo, L’Amber, and Killing Violets (Immanion), and the short story collection Cold Grey Stones (NewCon Press). She lives on the Sussex Weald with husband writer/artist John Kaiine, in a house full of books, stained glass, plants and cat fur.

Alison Littlewood is a writer of dark fantasy and horror fiction. Her first novel, A Cold Season, is published by Jo Fletcher Books, a new imprint of Quercus. Alison’s short stories have appeared in magazines including Black Static, Crimewave and Not One Of Us, as well as the British Fantasy Society’s Dark Horizons. She also contributed to the charity anthology Never Again as well as Read by Dawn Vol 3, Midnight Lullabies and Festive Fear 2. Visit her at www.alisonlittlewood.co.uk.

Mark Morris is the author of twenty novels, including Toady, Stitch, The Immaculate, The Secret of Anatomy, Fiddleback, The Deluge, and four books in the Doctor Who range. His short fiction, articles and reviews have appeared in various anthologies and magazines, and he won a 2007 British Fantasy Award after editing Cinema Macabre, a book of horror movie essays by genre luminaries. Recent and forthcoming work includes the official tie-in novel for zombie apocalypse computer game Dead Island, a novelisation of classic Hammer movie Vampire Circus, a story collection Long Shadows, Nightmare Light, and a follow-up to Cinema Macabre entitled Cinema Futura.

Marie O’Regan is a British Fantasy Award-nominated author and editor, based in Derbyshire. Her first collection, Mirror Mere, was published in 2006. Her genre journalism has appeared in magazines such as The Dark Side, Rue Morgue and Fortean Times, and her interview book, Voices in the Dark, was released last year. She is co-editor of the bestselling Hellbound Hearts and Mammoth Book of Body Horror, plus editor of the forthcoming Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women.

Marion Pitman has been writing for most of her life and selling short stories and poetry since 1977. She is a Londoner now living in Reading, sells second-hand books on the internet, and has no car, television, or cats. If she won the lottery she would avoid winter altogether and watch a lot more cricket. Her short fiction has appeared in Wildstacks, Estranomicon, 19, 3SF, and anthologies from Sphere, Hutchinson, Fontana, Creeping Hemlock, Elastic Press, Ashtree, Mortbury, and Ebonvale Press.

Robert Shearman has written three collections of short stories, which have between them won the World Fantasy Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the Edge Hill Readers Prize. His latest, Remember Why You Fear Me, is published this autumn by Chizine. But he’s always going to be best known as the chap who brought the Daleks back to Doctor Who in its BAFTA winning return series, in an episode nominated for a Hugo Award. Exterminate!

Sarah Singleton is the award-winning author of eight YA novels, including Dark Storm, The Amethyst Child and Century, all published by Simon & Schuster UK, and one adult novel, The Crow Maiden (Wildside Press). She has published short stories in magazines and anthologies including Interzone, Black Static, The Bitten Word, and Timepieces. www.crowmaiden.plus.com .

Adrian Tchaikovsky was born in Lincolnshire, studied and trained in Reading, and now lives in Leeds. He is known for the Shadows of the Apt fantasy series starting with Empire in Black and Gold and currently up to book 7, Heirs of the Blade. Book 8, The Air War, is out in August 2012. His hobbies include stagefighting, and tabletop, live and online role-playing. More information and short stories can be found at:

www.shadowsoftheapt.com.

Mark West was born in Kettering, in 1969 and now lives with his wife and son in the town of Rothwell. Writing since the age of eight, he was first published in 1999 and has seen almost seventy short stories appear since then, as well as two novels, a collection, Strange Tales, and a novelette: “The Mill”. Several short stories, two novellas from Pendragon Press, and a chapbook from Spectral Press called What Gets Left Behind are forthcoming. Mark can be contacted through his website at www.markwest.org.uk

To see “Fog on the Old Coast Road” read aloud by the author in front of a live audience, please go here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=miesqwbTXFw

Ian Whates is the author of two novel series: The Noise Sequence (Solaris), and The City of 100 Rows (Angry Robot), and the editor of numerous anthologies. He is also the author of more than forty published short stories, many of which are collected in The Gift of Joy (2008). A selection of his more recent fictions are featured in a second collection, Growing Pains, due from PS Publishing early in 2013. Ian is still trying to figure out where NewCon Press came from. To see the original performance of “Don’t Listen” before a live audience, please go to: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJctPHXJop4

Liz Williams is a science fiction and fantasy writer living in Glastonbury, UK, where she is co-director of a witchcraft supply business. She has had thirteen novels published to date via Bantam Spectra (US) and Tor Macmillan (UK), also Night Shade Press. Her short stories appear regularly in such magazines as Realms of Fantasy and Asimov’s, and are collected in The Banquet of the Lords of Night (Night Shade) and A Glass of Shadow (NewCon Press). Her novels have been shortlisted for the Philip K Dick and Arthur C Clarke Awards. Her latest novel, The Iron Khan, is released through Morrigan Press.

The original poster promoting the Hauntings readings

Designed by Vincent Holland Keen of the Un:bound team.

www.unboundve.blogspot.co.uk/