by Amy Cross
“When one sees a fellow human being in distress,” she remembered her aunt saying once, “one has a moral duty to go and help, even if one has to put one's life in danger. Never stop caring about other people.”
She remembered seeing her aunt put that theory into action once: a child had wandered off the edge of the pavement on a busy street, and Patricia had rushed out with no thought to her own safety and grabbed the kid, barely escaping injury as a car screeched to a halt with inches to spare. The move had been instinctive, as if her aunt didn't even have to think twice, and now Megan was starting to feel that it was this spirit of helpfulness that might have lured the old woman out of the flat, maybe late one night...
“How far would you go, though?” she whispered as she continued her walk along the path. She could totally imagine her aunt phoning for help if she happened to spot someone on the tracks, and she was also worried that if push came to shove, the old woman might actually run out there and try to pull someone clear. She didn't want to believe that such a thing might have happened, but she knew that in the absence of any other possible explanation, she had to at least give the theory some time.
Spotting someone on the path up ahead, she kept walking for a moment before stopping and peering through the fence again. She didn't much feel like talking to anyone, and she definitely didn't want to have to explain what she was doing, so she figured she'd just wait a moment for the other person to clear off. Her eyes searched the area on both sides of the tracks, but there was no sign of anything more than gravel and a few untamed weeds. Turning to look back up at the tower-block, she quickly spotted her aunt's flat and tried to imagine her sitting at her window, watching the tracks for any sign of danger.
Glancing along the path that ran parallel to the fence, she saw that the other woman was still standing a little further ahead, seemingly mesmerized by the sight of the tracks.
Shoving her hands in her pockets, Megan decided that she might as well just get moving and try to keep any human contact to a brief nod. As she approached the other woman, however, she could see that her gaze was intent, as if she was staring at the train tracks and had no awareness of anyone or anything else around her. She also seemed younger than Megan had at first thought, more like a late teen. Having been keen to avoid any kind of contact a moment ago, Megan now slowed as she passed, worried that something seemed wrong with the girl. With her aunt's words still fresh in her mind, she figured that she should at least check that there was no need to worry.
“Hi,” she said finally.
She waited for a response, but none was forthcoming.
Glancing over her shoulder at the girl, she was struck by the contrast between her pale white face and her dark, red-ringed eyes. She slowed her pace a little more; after the police officer's words earlier, accusing her and her family of not bothering to keep in touch with her aunt, she felt compelled to check that everything was okay, but finally she told herself that there was no need to interfere in someone else's business. Looking ahead, she took a few more paces before stopping again and peering through the fence.
There was still no sign of her aunt.
Sighing, she was about to turn and keep walking when she spotted movement in the corner of her eye. Glancing back along the path, she felt certain that something was wrong, but it took a few seconds before she realized that the pale-faced girl was nowhere to be seen. A moment later, she spotted something on the other side of the fence, and when she looked through she saw that the girl had somehow managed to make her way past the fence and was now stumbling down the gravel embankment hat led to the tracks.
“Hey!” Megan called out, her heart racing as she ran back to the spot where the girl had been standing.
Sure enough, part of the fence had been pulled loose, but as she peered through Megan couldn't quite bring herself to actually hurry after the girl. Nearby, a large sign warned of the dangers:
ELECTROCUTION HAZARD. VEHICLES PASSING AT HIGH SPEED. NO TRESPASSING.
“Hey!” she shouted. “It's not safe down there! Get back!”
Leaning through the gap in the fence, she considered running after the girl, but fear held her back.
“Hey!” she called out. “Stop!”
Ignoring her, the girl began to make her way unsteadily down the slope. She was walking with a slight limp, and with the gait of someone who was exhausted but who was nevertheless determined to keep going.
“Damn it,” Megan muttered, fumbling in her pockets for her phone before realizing that she must have left it in the flat. Seeing that the girl was getting further away by the second, she paused for a moment before finally climbing through the gap in the fence and running over to the top of the slope. She told herself that this was as close to the track as she was willing to go, but at the same time the girl was already too far ahead.
In the distance, a train horn sounded.
Looking along the track, Megan couldn't see anything headed their way yet, but she figured the train must be around the bend.
“Hey!” she shouted, turning back to watch the girl. “You're not supposed to be down there.”
As she got to the edge of the tracks, the girl stopped for a moment. After standing completely still for a few seconds, she slowly turned and looked back at Megan.
“No,” Megan whispered, seeing the exhausted expression in the girl's eyes, which seemed to speak of some great misery, almost as if she'd given up on life. “Hey! Stop!”
The girl turned away again.
“Jesus,” Megan muttered, struggling to get down the gravel embankment. She could hear an approaching train much more clearly now, but no matter how terrifying it felt to be so close to the tracks, she couldn't allow the possibility that the girl might get hurt. “Stop!” she shouted, slipping in the gravel and sliding a few feet before managing to steady herself again. “What the hell are you doing? Get back from there, there's a train coming!”
As she got to the bottom of the embankment, she saw to her horror that the girl had stepped onto the tracks, while a train sped toward her at full-speed, hurtling around the curve.
“No!” Megan shouted, “you have to get -”
Before she could finish, the train rushed past, slamming into the woman with such force that Megan didn't even see the moment of impact. She stared in horrified silence as the carriages rattled past, and finally the train shot off into the distance, not even slowing. Her heart pounding, Megan braced for the most horrific sight she could imagine.
On the tracks, however, there was nothing.
No body.
No blood.
No sign that the woman had been there at all.
Her heart pounding in her chest, Megan looked both ways along the track, convinced that somehow the woman must have leaped out the way at the last moment. Hurrying in the direction that the train had gone, she frantically glanced around, bracing herself for what seemed like the inevitable: pieces of the girl's body, perhaps some blood. She kept going, figuring that the force of the impact might have scattered the gruesome debris far and wide, but after fifty meters or so she stopped as she realized that there was absolutely nothing to see.
Besides, the train hadn't slowed.
Looking around, she hoped in vain to spot something that might explain what had just happened. The only possible chance was that the girl had managed to get out of the way, but there was nowhere to hide even if she'd managed such a feat, and after a moment it became apparent that she seemed to have vanished into thin air. Megan turned, still not quite believing what she'd seen, still searching for some kind of rational explanation, until finally she realized that nothing could explain the way the girl had disappeared.
Looking back up at Marshall Heights, she spotted the window of her aunt's flat high up on the eighth floor, and slowly the truth began to dawn: her aunt had seen something, perhaps even run down to help, and now she was gone.
Part Three
INTRUDER
One
“Moment o
f truth, then,” Megan said as she stood in the bathroom doorway, holding the pregnancy test kit in her hands. She began to tear at the cellophane. A moment later she had the box open, and then finally with trembling hands she removed the tester itself.
And then she paused.
Sighing, she looked over at her reflection in the cracked mirror. For a moment, she was struck by the dark shadows under her eyes, and she felt that she'd aged several years in just a single month. She'd always looked young for her age, but now things seemed to have swung the other way: she looked older than her thirty-one years, even though she told herself that at least part of the effect was down to the bathroom's unflattering lighting.
“This is nuts,” she said finally, tossing the kit into the bin. “I'm not pregnant. I can't be pregnant.”
***
“Friday, October fifth,” she read out loud as she stood in Michael's office. “After two nights of silence, it came again last night. The same knocking, and this time it used my name. It's like it's daring me to go out there, and sometimes I think I should do it, just to get this nightmare over with.”
Looking over at Michael, she could see the skepticism in his expression.
“I'm just reading what she wrote,” she pointed out. “I'm not saying I believe it.”
“And you just found that thing this morning?”
“It was in a pile of papers,” she explained as she flicked through to the entries for the following week. “I was planning to go through them all this morning. I still am, there might be something in there but...” She paused, her eyes scanning the page. “Listen to this. Monday, October eighth. It seems to be coming every night now, tapping at the window and trying anything it can think of to get me out there. Last night it even sounded a little like Henry, but that was probably all in my head. I think I'm going crazy.”
“Who's Henry?”
“Her husband,” she replied. “He died a few years ago, a short time before she moved here.”
“No offense,” Michael continued, “but maybe she was right. Maybe she really was just going crazy.”
“Wednesday, October tenth. I almost opened the door last night. It sounded more like Henry than ever, and this time I had my hand on the latch, ready to open it. Only fear made me stop, but I think next time I might do it. I don't care what's out there, I just want this all to be over.” She paused for a moment, before checking the next few pages of the diary and finding them to be blank. “No more entries,” she said, turning to Michael, “and no-one in the family heard from her again.”
“So that's when she vanished?”
“Maybe she did it,” Megan replied, closing the diary. “Maybe that was the night she opened the door.”
“And the boogeyman got her?”
“Something happened,” she continued, unable to hide her sense of desperation. “I'm not saying it was a ghost, but something was obviously banging on her door. I heard it myself, it's real!”
“It was probably the wind,” he replied, interrupting her.
“It was not the wind,” she said firmly. “There was a knocking sound, and a voice.” She paused for a moment. “Do you know what I think? I think someone's up to something, maybe playing some kind of sick game. Maybe it's kids, maybe it's someone who's just got a dark sense of humor and then things went too far. Maybe they were enjoying terrorizing my aunt and they thought it was funny, and then it got out of hand.” She paused again, her mind racing with possibilities. “And maybe she had a heart attack or something like that, she died and then whoever was doing this, they panicked and hid the body.”
“And then came back last night to do the same thing to you?”
Realizing that her explanation made little sense, she sighed.
“This whole thing sounds very convoluted,” Michael continued. “Don't they always say that the simplest explanation is the most likely?”
“But it's possible that she was being tormented,” she continued, feeling a wave of shock pass through her body. “God, she really might be dead.”
“Or she's sunning herself on holiday,” he replied, “and her postcards got lost in the mail.”
“Are there any CCTV cameras in this place?”
“Sure.”
“Can we check the footage?”
“None of them actually work,” he told her. “There's no budget for that kind of thing. We leave them up just as a deterrent, to make people think they're being watched. I even dust them sometimes.”
“They didn't deter whoever was terrorizing my aunt,” Megan replied, “and they didn't deter whoever knocked on her door last night. Has anyone else reported a disturbance in the night?”
He opened his mouth to reply, but something seemed to be holding him back.
“What about 3am?” she asked. “You act like you don't believe any of this could be happening, but yesterday you were pretty adamant that I shouldn't be awake at 3am, so you obviously know something's going on.”
“I don't know anything of the sort,” he replied cautiously.
“So tell me what you suspect.”
He sighed. “I don't believe in ghosts,” he said after a moment, “and I don't believe in little green men or boogeymen or any of that stuff.”
“Neither do I.”
“What I do believe in is... things that I can prove, things that leave some kind of trace, and I can't deny that something seems to happen around this place at three in the morning.” Another pause, as if he was reluctant to go on. “There are noises. Bumps. Some people report knocks on their doors, they often say the voice sounds a little like someone they know, usually someone who died. They see a figure through the frosted glass, and they usually say that it's accompanied by this feeling of dread, as if they can sense that they shouldn't open the door no matter how much the figure begs them.”
“And you've looked into it?”
“I think it's just something that has snowballed out of control,” he told her. “This building is like an echo chamber. People tell stories, they goad each other on to add little elements, and before you know it they all believe these things have happened when they really haven't. It's paranoia and fear, and for some reason the environment of Marshall Heights is like an incubator for these things. The 3am rubbish is just a story that's run out of control, and if you ask me, maybe some of the residents even go out there and knock on doors themselves in an attempt to keep the story running.”
“So you've heard the knocking too?”
“Everyone has,” he replied a little evasively.
“And you didn't open the door?”
“It's never actually knocked on mine.”
“But you're the building manager,” she continued. “Shouldn't you be doing something to stop all of this? Shouldn't you call the police?”
“It's just a game that the local residents are playing.”
“A game that might have killed my aunt.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head, “it wouldn't go that far. Whatever's happened to your aunt, it's a coincidence that she got mixed in with all of this. I'm sorry you found a diary that showed she was being harassed, but that's really all that was going on. You're right, maybe I should have done something to nip it all in the bud sooner. I'll talk to people, maybe I'll put up a notice in the foyer by the mailboxes.”
“Is that the best you can do? A notice by the mailboxes?”
“What else would you suggest?”
She stared at him for a moment, aware of a sense of unease in his expression.
“You're lying,” she said finally.
“Excuse me?”
“I think you're more scared than you're letting on. I think you're not doing anything about this because you're scared that if you do get involved, you might find that it's something that goes against everything you think you know about the world.”
“I thought you didn't believe in ghosts either?”
“I don't,” she replied, “but I'm willing to accept the possibility. And I'm not t
oo scared to look.”
“You didn't open the door last night.”
“That's because I wasn't prepared. There could have been anyone out there. A burglar, a stalker, worse...” She paused for a moment. “I'll be prepared tonight, though.”
“Megan -”
“I'm serious,” she continued. “If this is someone pulling a prank, then I'm going to call him on it. I'm going to open that door, and I'm going to be prepared to defend myself, and then I'm going to find out what the hell happened to my aunt.”
“I'd rather you just let it alone.”
“Why don't you come with me?” she asked. “Wait in the flat with me tonight and at 3am we'll find out the truth.” She waited for him to reply, but it was clear that he wasn't comfortable with her suggestion. “I'm not letting this go on,” she continued. “I'm getting to the bottom of it all, and I'm doing it tonight, whether you're there or not.” Turning, she headed to the door before glancing back at him. “I guess you know where to find me if you change your mind. I'd like it if you were there, I'd rather not do this alone, but I'm opening that door tonight and I'm going to see who's out there.”
She waited for him to reply, but she could tell that despite his protestations to the contrary, Michael seemed scared to learn the truth. For all that he claimed not to believe in ghosts, he was clearly worried about putting that belief to the test.
“I guess I'll let you know what happens,” she said finally, before heading out of his office. Stopping suddenly, she looked back at him. “By the way, who's Ellis Hathaway?”
Michael stared at her for a moment.
“I'm sorry?” he asked finally.
“I saw the name in one of my aunt's notebooks. Does it mean anything to you?”
She waited for a reply.
“No,” Michael said eventually. “It doesn't mean a thing.”
Two
“Ghosts aren't real, are they?”
Stopping as she was in the midst of slipping into her coat, Charmian turned to Beth.
