by Amy Cross
Her voice trailed off.
“Tommy, I just want to speak to you one last time,” she continued finally, as a tear fell onto the photo's glass. “Just once, just so that I can tell you how much I love you, and how much I miss you. Can't you appear to me once, just to let me know that you're okay and that you're at peace? Because I've got to admit, I'm really starting to struggle here. I keep telling myself that you're around somewhere, but the truth is, I haven't sensed you once since you died. It's almost as if...”
She swallowed hard as she realized that sooner rather than later she was going to have to accept the truth. She'd been delaying that moment for so long, but she could feel a sense of dread and failure slowly creeping up through her chest, filling her soul and pushing away any last remaining hope. Finally, still holding the photo, she realized that she couldn't fool herself any longer.
“You're not here,” she said, closing her eyes as more tears ran down her cheeks. “There are no ghosts in the pub at all. You're gone forever.”
Sitting alone on the bed, in darkness, she began to sob. Her cries were the only sound, finally disturbing the brooding silence of the empty building.
Chapter Two
“You know,” Matt muttered to himself as he stood in the hallway of his house and slipped out of his coat, “if you're being brave and you really are scared here by yourself, I could always stay over.”
He paused, and then he sighed.
“Stupid!” he said as he hung his coat on the hook. “In what universe was a line like that ever going to work on a classy girl like Sally Cooper? Now she probably things you're a complete moron.”
Catching his reflection in the mirror above the hall table, he stared at himself for a moment before sighing again. He tried to stand a little straighter, to fix his posture and pull his sloping shoulders back, but deep down he felt that he didn't cut a very striking figure. He took a moment to try to change his hairstyle, but this too already seemed like a lost cause. As for his shirt, which bore several small ketchup stains...
“And she'd be right,” he added. “Face it, she probably has people asking her out all the time. Just 'cause she bums a cigarette from you occasionally, that doesn't mean she's interested. It just means she likes you as a friend and she feels comfortable around you. You should be happy with that, instead of trying to turn it into something else.”
He leaned back against the wall and listened for a moment to the silence of the house. No matter how many times he tried to tell himself that there was no point pining after Sally, there was a stubborn little atom of hope that remained stuck somewhere in his mind, and he just couldn't shake the thought that maybe – with a little luck and an injection of charm – he might yet have a chance.
“Matthew?” a voice called out suddenly from upstairs. “Matthew, is that you?”
“Who else would it be, Mum?” he replied.
“Have you been at that pub again?”
“I just popped in for a couple of drinks,” he explained. “I'm not drunk.”
He waited, but he could already hear his mother shuffling around upstairs. Usually she'd be tucked up in bed by the time he got home, and he couldn't help feeling a flicker of dread in his chest as he realized that this time she seemed somewhat agitated. A moment later he heard the loud creak of the bed as his mother sat down. Evidently a day spent knitting and watching the television had failed to tire her out.
“Matthew?” she shouted. “Are you coming up? Bring me a glass of water!”
***
“I've been talking to your father all evening,” Jean explained as she settled back on the bed, “and he thinks you need to look for a better job. The mines -”
“I'm not talking about this again, Mum,” Matt said as he set the glass of water on her nightstand. “I've made my decision, and I'm sticking by it. And Dad's not here, you know he's not.”
“He was here just this evening,” she told him, pointing at the foot of the bed, “sat right there. We talked for hours about all sorts of things! Including you!”
“Dad's been dead for nine years,” he reminded her, struggling to hide the sense of irritation in his voice. “You know that. I took you up to his grave just the other day. We went with Roger, remember?”
He waited for an answer.
“Do you remember that we put some flowers on his grave?” he added. “I got some nice ones from Tesco and we took them up there, you said it'd been too long and you were probably right. Roger brought some sandwiches, and later you told me you thought he shouldn't have eaten them there. But the thing is, Dad's gone. I mean, he's really gone. And he doesn't pop back to have chats.”
“He's not happy with you,” she replied, as if she hadn't heard a word he'd just said to her. “He thinks you need to get back down those mines, or you need to get work somewhere else. There's no in-between. Every day that you spend out there, shouting and causing trouble, is another day that makes it harder for you to get a new job. You can't afford to be picky these days, Matthew, there just aren't that many jobs around at the moment. Your father would be telling you the same thing. You're wasting your time.”
“Dad would never say something like that.”
“I know what he told me,” she replied defiantly. “I was married to that man for thirty-seven years, I think I understood him a little better than you did.”
Although he knew better than to argue with her, Matt felt that he couldn't let her last point go. He'd been enduring his mother's constant criticism for months, and most of the time he'd bitten his tongue; lately, however, she'd started bringing his father into the discussion, claiming to have received messages from beyond the grave, and he genuinely felt as if he needed to put a stop to all the nonsense.
“Dad would be proud of what I'm doing,” he told her. “Hell, he'd be out there with me every day, manning the barricades and -”
“Watch your language!” she snapped.
“You know I'm right,” he continued, pointing toward the window. “He'd be out there with a placard, shouting louder than anyone else. How can you possibly say that he'd want me to be a strike-breaker?”
He waited, but she had no response and he was starting to think that perhaps he'd made his point. He looked down at the foot of the bed, at the spot where she'd started claiming to see his father, and for a moment he thought of the old man's smiling face. Although he desperately wanted to believe that his father's ghost might be lingering in the house, deep down he knew that there was next to no chance. A moment later, hearing a creaking sound out on the landing, he looked toward the door.
“Nothing good ever came of sitting around and doing nothing all day,” Jean said grumpily. “The Devil makes work for idle hands, Matthew.”
“I'm not idle,” he replied, turning to her again. “I'm out there every day, I'm...”
Sighing, he realized that there was absolutely no point arguing with her. Instead, he stepped back from the bed and took a moment to calm down.
“I'm turning in,” he told his mother. “Is there anything else you want before I go to bed?”
“I want lots of things,” she grumbled. “I want a son I can be proud of.”
“Goodnight, Mum,” he replied, turning and heading to the door. “I might be leaving for the line a little bit earlier tomorrow, so don't worry, I can get my own breakfast.”
“No, you can't,” she said, as she rolled over and switched the lamp off, “I'll just have to be up in time, that's all. I'll have your breakfast on the table at six, how's that? And I'll have a lunch done for you as well. I still don't know why you bother going out there, though. It's not as if you're ever going to change anything.”
He bristled, but this time he managed to keep from getting drawn into the same old argument.
“Goodnight, Mum.”
He bumped the door shut and made his way across the landing, and then he hesitated as he looked back toward the bathroom door. Bathed in moonlight, the bathroom appeared almost to exist in another, softer
world, and Matt couldn't help but think back to the very last time he'd ever seen his father, right before the old man had dropped dead after suffering a massive heart attack. They'd exchanged a few words about the football results, and then Matt had gone downstairs, only to hear a thump.
And that had been the end of Fred Ford; miner, war hero, dog-racing enthusiast. At least, according to Doctor Eymur, he hadn't suffered.
“Hey, Dad,” he whispered now, just in case some sad swirl of mist might appear and briefly take his father's form. “You would agree with the strike, wouldn't you?”
He waited.
“I know you would,” he added finally. “Mum's wrong. You're not appearing to her, you're gone, I know that. And if you were here, you'd be right behind me. In fact, if anyone was looking for your ghost and they came here, they'd be looking in the wrong place. You'd be out there on the picket line with me, not moping about the house.” He paused. “I wish I could talk to you one last time,” he muttered. “Or just see you. Just to know that you're around somewhere.”
He waited a moment longer, in case his father's spirit might like to speak up and make a few points, and then he stepped into his room and pushed the door shut.
The landing was empty now, and dark, and silent save for a faint murmuring sound that could just about be heard coming from the master bedroom.
“I've tried to tell him,” Jean was saying in the darkness, her voice heavy with sadness as the bed creaked again under her weight, “but will he listen to me? Of course he won't. He's just wasting his life away.”
Chapter Three
The following morning, sitting in the cafe opposite the pier, Sally stared out the window and watched as a seagull tried desperately to gain access to a bin. Forgetting all her fears and worries, she kept her gaze fixed firmly on the bird as it pull on a scrappy edge of the bin-liner, and she waited to see whether or not its little plan might succeed.
“Okay, I need to work on my conversation skills,” Jane said, sitting opposite her, “because there is no way I should be less interesting than a bloody seagull.”
Startled, Sally turned and saw that her friend had returned from the counter with two fresh coffees.
“Sorry,” she murmured, glancing out the window again and seeing that the seagull was still working on the bin. “My mind was completely empty there for a moment.”
“No kidding,” Jane replied, pouring a sachet of sugar into her coffee and then giving it a stir. “You've been in a world of your own ever since you walked through that door. Come on, spill, what's wrong? Did a customer give you trouble last night?”
“No!”
“Then it's a guy. Have you got a date?”
She leaned across the table.
“It's not that Matt guy, is it? 'Cause he's a drip. You can totally do so much better than him.”
“It's not a guy,” Sally told her, before hesitating for a moment. She knew that she'd have to come out with the truth eventually. “I just came to a realization last night. About the pub.”
“You realized that you could be doing something a damn sight more exciting than serving over-priced bad beer to a bunch of morons? What was it that tipped you off? Did someone get dared to eat a urinal cake again?”
“I realized that there's nothing there,” she explained. “Not upstairs, I mean.”
“I'm lost.”
“It's not haunted,” Sally continued. “You know how people always say that there's a little girl haunting The Crowford Hoy, or that there's some woman who used to live there and she appears sometimes, or that there's some other ghost? It's not true.”
“What made you figure that out?”
“Time. And patience.”
“Every pub in this town has a ghost story,” Jane told her. “There's a gray lady in The George, and a spooky little girl in The Crown and Anchor, and apparently some famous painter haunts The Old Bottle. The point is, even the people who tell those stories don't necessarily believe them. The stories about The Crowford Hoy are pretty much the same, they're just fairy-tales told by excitable drunk people.” She paused, waiting for Sally to reply, but she quickly realized that something else was wrong. “This is about Tommy, isn't it?”
“I didn't say that,” Sally replied quickly.
Too quickly.
“It's been six months, hasn't it?” Jane continued. “Are you wondering why your son's ghost hasn't appeared to you?”
“I...”
Sally's voice trailed off.
“Can I ask you something?” Jane added. “I never quite understood why you packed up and rushed down to Crowford. It seems like you had a life in London, and a support network, and even after your separation from Tommy's father things don't seem to have been going too badly. I mean, I know people move across the country if a good job comes up, but did you really have to come all the way to Crowford – a town you have no ties to – just for a job working in a pub?”
“It's complicated.”
“There weren't any pub jobs going in London?”
“I said it's complicated!”
Jane tasted her coffee, before starting to add another sachet of sugar.
“Or did you come here specifically because of something Crowford has to offer?” she asked.
“Like what?”
“Like a reputation for hauntings,” Jane suggested, watching Sally's face carefully, waiting for any sign that she was on the right track. “I'm trying to be delicate about this, but... How long after you arrived here did Tommy die?”
“About an hour.”
“Literally right after you got here?”
“I carried him into the room upstairs in the pub,” Sally explained, feeling a shudder pass through her chest as she thought back to that awful night, “and I set him on the bed. I talked to him for a few minutes, and then I went to fetch a couple more bags from the car. By the time I got back up, he was gone.”
“That must have been so awful.”
“I knew he didn't have long,” Sally admitted. “I thought he might last at least a few more days, though. I thought I'd get to take him to the beach and show him the sea, thinks like that.”
“Were you rushing him down here because you wanted to make sure he died in Crowford? Because you thought that'd make it more likely for him to come back as a ghost?”
Sally looked out the window and saw that the seagull had managed to pull out more of the bin-liner, which was now trailing in the wind, although the contents of the bin remained elusive.
“It sounds so stupid now,” she whispered, with tears in her eyes. “From what I read about Crowford, it's like everyone who dies here comes back as a ghost. Well, not everyone, but a lot of people. And I knew Tommy was coming to the end, even if I didn't want to admit that to anyone, or to myself.” She turned back to Jane. “Is it so bad that I wanted to find some way to still see my son? Even if I knew that it was a desperate attempt, is it so bad that I at least thought I could give it a try?”
“You wouldn't be the first person to do something like that,” Jane told her. “I've heard similar stories before, of people coming to Crowford because they think they can take advantage of its... reputation. So what happened to make you finally give up on the idea?”
“Last night I just sat in my room and realized that the entire place was empty.” She leaned back in the plastic chair. “I uprooted him for nothing. I put him through all that trauma of the car journey... for nothing.”
Jane tested her coffee again, and immediately grabbed a third sugar sachet.
“You know, Sally,” she said cautiously, “I do believe in stuff like that. I've lived in Crowford my whole life, I know what it's like to be aware of things happening on the edge of your perception. When we were kids, we used to go out to the old abbey in the forest, and sometimes we'd go to look through the windows into the old school house, or we'd sit on the beach until midnight, convincing ourselves that ghostly sailors were about to appear. The point is, I never saw anything definitive, but I
always felt as if some kind of presence was just out of sight.”
She paused.
“I also know what it's like to want to see someone again. I lost my sister, remember?”
“But you've never seen her ghost?”
“Nope,” Jane said, with sadness in her voice. “That doesn't mean that it's impossible, though.”
“Maybe not,” Sally replied unconvincingly. “I'm just starting to think that I might be better off starting again. I came to Crowford for something that turned out to be all in my head. Now it's like I'm the one who's haunting the place.”
“I get how you feel,” Jane said. “You know, someone once told me that even if a place is haunted, sometimes the ghosts... settle.”
“Settle?”
“Like, if they're not disturbed for a while, they kind of forget themselves. They drift away, and even though they're still there, they're much more passive and much harder to notice. They just start fading into the background until they might as well not exist at all.”
“Okay, but how does that help?”
“Well, she told me that sometimes all you have to do is stir them up a bit.”
“Now I'm the one who's starting to get lost,” Sally replied.
“Are you working tonight?”
“For a change. Seventh night in a row. It's okay, though, I don't mind, and I definitely need the money.”
“And Jerry's gonna be out on one of his all-nighters again, right?”
“Almost certainly. Why?”
“I'm gonna pop over around closing time,” Jane told her, “and we'll see if we can kick-start things a little. Don't ask me any more than that, because I'd feel stupid trying to explain it, but just trust me here. Assuming you want to kick-start anything, that is.”
“You mean you think you can force the ghosts to appear?”
“It's a bit more subtle than that,” Jane replied. “It probably won't work, but at the very least we can have a bit of fun. What do you say? Are you up for one last try?”
