by Sam West
It suddenly occurred to her that she would be arrested for murder if Dr Everett’s body was discovered before she left the building. Because apparently no one else could see the awful things she could see.
“I’m fine, thanks,” she replied, trying to inject a note of breezy indifference into her voice whilst praying to a God that she didn’t believe in that the woman couldn’t see the state she was in. “Our session finished a little early today, I’ve run out of things to say.” She laughed, hoping it didn’t sound too much like a nervous twitch. “Oh, and Dr Everett asked me to tell you that he’s taking a break for ten minutes and would you mind not disturbing him?”
“Did he now?”
“Yeah.”
It felt like the woman held her gaze for far too long. But then she dropped her eyes and went back to whatever it was she was doing at the computer.
“Have a good day Miss Brown,” she said, dismissing her out of hand.
“You too.”
Have a good day when you discover Dr Everett’s body and you report me to the police….
She took the lift to the ground floor. When she hit the street, she ran.
Tears streamed down her cheeks and she couldn’t see where she was going.
How long do I have before she calls the police? she wondered. Where shall I go? What shall I do?
She lurched blindly through the crowds, not caring who she crashed into.
When she could run no more, when stitch clawed at her sides forcing her to bend double, she stopped. Once she had caught her breath again, she looked up.
She was on the outskirts of Soho. The pedestrianized centre of Soho was across the busy main road and she crossed it.
A skinny black guy stuffed a leaflet in her face when she stopped in the street. She blanked him and pulled out her mobile.
Fred picked up after the first ring.
“Fred,” she gasped into the phone. “Something’s happened. I need you.”
“What’s happened? What is it?”
“I can’t say over the phone. Can you meet me?”
“No Casey, I can’t. I’m tired of your games. You dumped me, remember? I’m not your little lapdog that comes running every time you click your fingers.”
“Please Fred, this is important. I’m in trouble. Real trouble. Like, locked up for life kind of trouble. You have to meet me, I don’t have anyone else.”
Fred sighed. He was silent for so long she thought he was going to hang up.
“I can’t leave until four thirty. I have a meeting.”
Casey checked her watch. It was only two.
“I need you now Fred.”
“OK, OK, fine. I’m on my way.”
She walked down the street a few metres and stopped outside the nearest pub and gave him the name of it. She told she was going inside and would wait until he came, then hung up.
She went inside.
CHAPTER FOUR.
The pub she had walked into was called The Pink Flamingo. From the outside, she had assumed it was a gay bar. Turned out it was a strip bar, which she only worked out when she had to pay to get in. She thought about phoning Fred to change their meeting place, but in the greater scheme of things she didn’t care and figured it would be petty. Besides, she didn’t want to risk him changing his mind about meeting her.
It was dark inside, and thankfully not too busy. Some sleazy sounding pop track she half recognised pumped from the speakers, Goldfrapp or something.
“Strippers don’t start on the main stage ‘til tonight,” the young, effeminate man said behind the bar. “But you can arrange for a private lap dance if you want.”
“No, I’m good thanks.”
“What are you drinking? A Bloody Mary?”
Casey’s blood ran cold. “Why would you ask that?”
“Ask what?”
“If I wanted a Bloody Mary?”
He looked at her blankly. “I never asked that. I asked what you wanted to drink.”
“Just an orange juice, thanks. No, hang on, make that a whisky.”
So now I’m hearing things, she thought. But she could’ve sworn the barkeep had asked if she wanted a Bloody Mary…
What if I’m losing my mind?
She took her whisky over to a dark corner booth that had a clear view of the exit. Casey had never been in a strip club before but it was pretty much how she expected one to look. It was the darkest club she had ever been in, only the long, thin catwalk and various podiums dotted around the large space were lit up with pink, neon lighting. There were no strippers and just three middle aged men sat silently and alone at the bar.
Behind the long leather seat she was sitting on ran a length of mirror. She swivelled her head to look at her reflection and recoiled in disgust. She barely recognised herself. Her blue eyes were wild and staring and her usually neat, shoulder length blonde hair was dishevelled and greasy looking from excessive sweating. Her mascara had run and her skin looked glossy in an unhealthy way. She pulled out a tissue from her shoulder bag and cleaned up her face as best she could.
She looked down at her torn tights and noticed for the first time how her back and armpits felt clammy with sweat from fear and exertion.
She sighed deeply. What a mess she was in. The whisky burned a trail down to her stomach and she closed her eyes for a second, her mind a blissful blank, lost in the beat of the dance track. Maybe this was all a nightmare, maybe Dr Everett wasn’t dead and she would wake up any second…
“Miss?”
Her eyes snapped open. One of the middle aged men that had been at the bar was standing over her table.
“Yes?”
There was something about him that put her instantly on edge. He looked off his head, except he wasn’t swaying or slurring his speech. His eyes looked empty, like he was staring through her, not at her.
“I’m getting stronger. I’ll kill them all if you don’t bring me them.”
“What?”
“Bring me them, Casey.”
Then the man collapsed on the floor.
Casey screamed, but it was drowned out by the thumping music. The man lay still for a second, then he sat up looking totally confused.
He looked up at her blankly. “What happened?”
Casey could only stare at the man in wide eyed horror.
“Fucking crazy bitch, what did you do?” He scrambled to his feet, his short, skinny body visibly trembling. “Crazy fucking bitch,” he repeated, heading for the exit.
Casey rubbed her red raw eyes. Either she was losing her mind or Mary Blake had possessed the body of a random stranger.
She downed the rest of the whisky and coughed, not used to hard liquor. She thought about running. Running blindly out the door to God only knew where. But what would that achieve? The ghost of Mary Blake, or her own insanity would catch up with her wherever she went.
Half an hour and three whiskys later, Fred walked through the door.
“Casey,” he said, sliding into the booth next to her. “Are you going to tell me what the hell this is all about?”
The sight of her ex was such a relief she had to fight down tears. “Fred. I’m so scared, I don’t know what to do.”
“Are you drunk?” he asked, peering at her more closely.
His question irked her. It was hardly the point.
“No, I am not drunk. Aren’t you more interested in what’s happened rather than how much I’ve had to drink?”
“I’m just worried about you Casey. After your little outburst at school today I don’t know what to think. Your behaviour is erratic, to say the least.”
“I’ve been seeing someone, you know, for the issues I have from my past.”
“Ah, yes, the big secrets from your past. The things you always refused to talk to me about.”
Asking her ex to meet her was a bad idea. What had she been thinking? This was a mistake.
“Are you here to dig at me, or are you going to listen to me?”
He looke
d sad, and she felt guilty. Fred was a good man. She wished things could be different, but her issues with intimacy were too severe to survive a normal relationship. Yet another legacy from that night.
“I’m sorry. I still care about you Casey. I should’ve been the one to help you, not some shrink. It’s not just your body you kept closed from me. What happened to you that was so terrible to make you this way?”
She looked at him with pity. He had loved her so much once. Maybe he still did. But now there was so much hurt that flowed between them like an uncrossable ocean.
“The psychiatrist I was seeing is dead.”
“You brought me here to tell me that?” he asked, his eyebrows shooting up to his receding, but distinguished hairline.
Abstractly she thought how handsome he was. She had always loved the way his hair was greying at the temples and for a man in his late forties he was in fine shape.
“He died in the middle of a session with me. I went to him straight away after what happened at school.”
“He did what?”
“He was murdered.”
“What’s gotten into you Casey? Are you having some kind of episode?”
“Damn it Fred, I’m serious. Dr Everett is dead.”
He regarded her levelly, the disbelief in his eyes all too obvious. “If what you’re saying is true, then why aren’t you still there with the police?”
“Because they’ll think I did it.”
A dark cloud passed over his face. “Casey? What are you trying to tell me here?”
“I’m telling you Dr Everett is dead.”
“Did you bring me here to confess to murder?”
“What? No!”
“We need to go to the police. Come on, we’ll go now.”
“No. I can’t. Because it wasn’t a person that did it. It was a, a thing.”
“What do you mean, a thing?”
“I mean a supernatural entity.”
Fred shifted uncomfortably in his seat. She watched him sadly. He didn’t believe her and she so needed him to. She couldn’t do this alone.
“Was it a supernatural entity that was chasing you in the school corridor today?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus Casey. We need to call the police and go back to Dr Everett’s office.”
“Shit, I knew this was a mistake.”
She got up. If he didn’t get up too, the only way out of the booth was over his lap. He didn’t budge.
“You’re not running out on me.”
His voice was calm and patronising.
“Let me go, Fred. I was stupid to ask you for help, and I’m sorry.”
“We need to go to the police.”
“You need to get out my way.”
A movement out of the corner of her eye in the mirror made her snap round her head. But when she looked in the mirror, there was nothing there.
Puzzled, she looked over at the spot in the booth opposite where the movement should have come from.
Nothing there either.
It must have been a reflection of the flickering neon lights.
“Casey? What are you looking at?”
“Nothing. I thought I… It doesn’t matter.”
“You’re scaring me. You really need to come with me. I’ll look after you, I promise.”
Now his tone was that of a hostage negotiator.
She smiled humourlessly to herself. He really did think she was off her rocker.
She was about to reply, about to tell him to get out of her way, when a movement directly behind her in the mirror caught her eye once more.
This time when she spun round, she saw exactly what the movement was.
Her insides shrivelled and her blood pumped ice, every part of her tingling and cold. Her head pulsed with the impossibility of it. It couldn’t be.
But it was.
Mary Blake, in the place of her own reflection, exactly as she appeared in her reoccurring nightmares.
She screamed and stumbled backwards, her rump thumping into the table edge.
“Casey? What are doing?” Fred asked.
But she barely heard him. Mary stared back at her, a smile tugging at her black lips, her eyes rimmed with black and impossible to see properly as they were set so far back in the sockets. In her hand she held a knife aloft.
“Can’t you see her?” she gasped.
“For the love of God, see who?”
“Oh Jesus. Fred, you have to move. Now.”
“What are you talking about?”
Casey lunged for him, shoving at his shoulders with all her strength.
“Have you lost your mind?” he spluttered incredulously, holding his weight against her.
“Move!” she screamed at him.
But it was too late.
The knife Mary held broke the surface of the mirror, followed by her arms. A white forearm snaked over his forehead, whipping back his head so it smashed against the glass. The hand that held the knife reached round and slit his throat in one swift movement.
The hands retreated and his head flopped forwards.
Casey swayed on her feet, her hands clasped to her face, staring down in horror at Fred’s corpse and the blood that pooled in his lap.
She met the eyes of her reflection. Of Mary.
“You bitch,” Casey said.
Mary’s mouth was still pulled upwards in a grotesque parody of a smile.
“I’m getting stronger Casey, take me to the others, only you can take me to them.”
Mary’s lips didn’t move when she spoke. Casey realised that the voice was coming from inside her head, not from the ghoul in the mirror.
The image of Mary’s face faded in and out; one second she was seeing Mary, the next she was seeing herself.
“I will kill everyone you come into contact with if you don’t,” the voice whispered in her head.
Then Mary’s visage faded completely so that Casey was left staring at her own wide eyed, terrified face.
She cast a frantic glance over to the bar. Everything was as it was before, minus the one barfly that had left earlier. The barman was polishing glasses, staring vacantly into space and the two men sat at the bar stared into their drinks like the solution to all their problems lay in the bottom of that glass.
No one was paying a blind bit of attention to her.
Strange, whimpering sounds escaped her lips when she climbed over Fred’s lap. She had to get out of here and run like hell. It could be a matter of minutes before Fred’s body was discovered. And then the place would be crawling with police. They would check CCTV. She wondered what it would show. Certainly her. Probably not the ghost of Mary Blake and anyway, the camera would be positioned behind her. It would look like she did it.
Two seconds later she was out on the street, blinking in the sudden harsh light. Hordes of tourists and Londoners streamed past her, oblivious to her plight.
She lurched through the crowds, heading for the tube station, frantically going over the drastic situation in her mind.
Mary Blake wanted revenge. She wanted to kill Jack, Doug and Angel. And for some reason she didn’t understand, the only way Mary could get through into this world was through her.
A plan was slowly forming in her mind. She needed to find an internet café, and not in Soho.
Less than an hour later Casey was in Clapham South in an internet café. She glanced nervously behind her from her computer terminal, half expecting a tap on her shoulder from a policeman. How long did she have, she wondered. Surely Dr Everett and Fred would be discovered by now. The police were probably scouring CCTV footage right this second, tracking her movements from the moment she left the strip club.
Come on Casey, concentrate.
She logged into facebook and typed Jack Durrant into the search bar, finding him immediately. She sat there unmoving, holding her breath and staring at his photo. In almost fifteen years he had hardly changed at all. Still the same Jack. Still the same blonde hair flopping over hi
s forehead. Although the pretty boy was now more of a rugged man. Lines fanned out from his blue eyes squinting into the sun.
Her fingers hovered over the keys. What the hell was she supposed to say?
You can start by sending him a friend request.
Horror mixed in with relief when it was accepted immediately. She almost fell off her chair when she saw he was online. It was gone five so she figured she had just got lucky and caught him relaxing after work.
Maybe there is a God after all…
(Hello Jack,) she typed. (Long time no hear.)
His reply was immediate.
(Casey. I’ve looked for you before on facebook but could never find you.)
(Yeah, I set my security to private. I need to see you Jack.)
There was a long pause where the little box remained blank. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the sign for typing.
(I’ve been thinking about you, too. I’ve been paying to see someone about that night. She says I need closure. She says I need to find you. That I need to confront you.)
He wanted answers? And why should he want to confront her and not Doug and Angel? That simply did not make any sense. She shook her head in disbelief, her fingers quickly typing.
(What about Doug and Angel?)
(I can’t find them. I heard they emigrated to Australia together and then split up. They’re not on facebook.)
(Look, Jack, I don’t have much time. Can we meet up? Like, now?)
Again, the long pause.
(OK.)
It turned out he still lived in Kent, not far from the college they used to go to together. She figured she could be there in a few hours. She scribbled down his address on a scrap of paper and headed for Liverpool Street Station.
CHAPTER FIVE.
It was an awkward moment when Jack, the one time love of her life, opened the door to her and the darkness of early evening. They stood staring at each other for far too long than was comfortable before Jack invited her inside his one bedroom flat.
“Excuse the mess,” he said, leading her into the small living room. “I live by myself nowadays since my wife chucked me out. Ain’t got no reason to be tidy.”
