Hauntings

by Ian Whates (ed)

  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.”