The Ghosts of Hexley Airport

by Cross, Amy

  Muttering something under his breath, he unscrewed the lid and tipped three small white lozenges into the palm of his hand. After slipping one of them back into the bottle, he swallowed the other two and then chased them down with a gulp from his bottle of water, and then he leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes.

  “Just calm down,” he whispered to himself, although his hands were still trembling as they rested on his knees. “Not now, Thomas. Not now. You don't believe in 'em, remember?”

  He swallowed hard.

  And waited.

  After sitting in silence for a moment, he suddenly leaned forward and put his head in his hands. Clammy sweat was clinging to his brow, and finally he opened his eyes, staring down at the blue carpet. For a few seconds, he watched the repeating pattern of white dots, as if he was trying to lull himself into a sense of calm. He was still muttering something quietly to himself, some kind of mantra about well-being and calm and consciousness, but his hands were trembling as much as ever and now his right foot was tapping rapidly against the base of the seat. The mantra continued to tumble from his lips, repeating every ten seconds or so.

  The dead little girl was standing right in front of him, staring at the top of his bowed head.

  And Tom, though he would never admit it to anybody else, could see her burned face every time he dared open his eyes.

  “Go away,” he whispered frantically. “You're not here. You're not real. Go away. You're not here. You can't be real!”

  Those same words, over and over, as if he was trying to protect himself.

  And still the girl stared at him.

  “You are not here!” he hissed finally, trembling harder than ever. “You were not here on any of the other nights, and you are not here now. I just... I just have to wait for the pills to kick in.”

  Squeezing his eyes tight shut even tighter, he continued to whisper the same words. This was not the first time Tom had been in this situation. In his many years working at the airport, he'd already endured more than a dozen encounters with figures he couldn't explain. Never the little girl before. Always one of the women, or one time a man. Over the years he'd experimented with various anxiety and depression medication that he'd hoped would enable him to finally kick the hallucinations for good. He'd never told the doctors why he'd needed the pills, of course. He'd always lied. He'd lied to anyone who asked. As far as everyone else was concerned, his wife included, Thomas Edward Watson was a firm, steady man with no real problems at all. To maintain that illusion, he always rubbished any talk of ghosts.

  “Tom?”

  Gasping, he looked up and found that the girl was gone, replaced by Casey, who was now standing in front of him with a hint of concern in her eyes.

  “Are you okay, Tom?”

  “I'm fine!”

  He got to his feet so fast, he almost bumped into her.

  “You're sweating a lot,” she pointed out. “It's kinda showing through from your armpits.”

  “That'll be these damn lights,” he muttered, wiping his brow against his shirt sleeve as he glanced around, checking to make sure the little girl was gone. After a moment, he allowed himself a sigh of relief.

  In fact, the girl was standing a few feet away, still watching them, but Tom looked straight through her now, and finally he turned back to Casey.

  “What were the pills?” she asked.

  “I'm sorry?”

  “No, I'm sorry,” she continued, “that was none of my business. Please, don't answer.”

  “Just paracetamol,” he lied. “For a headache.”

  “None of my concern,” she replied, forcing a smile. “I checked all the way along to gate thirty, and everything looks tickety-boo, so I guess we're done here. By the way, I brought in a big fresh box of Yorkshire tea. The biggest box I could find at the supermarket. I thought maybe we could brew some up and you could tell me a few stories about working at this place.”

  “Stories? Why would you want to hear stories?”

  “I just -”

  “What kind of stories?”

  “I don't know,” she replied cautiously, clearly sensing that something had made Tom extremely jumpy, “I just -”

  Before she could finish, she heard a loud beeping sound coming from his pocket.

  Taking out his cellphone, Tom tapped at the screen and brought up the security program, and then he turned and looked toward the shopping area.

  “What's wrong?” Casey asked.

  “Something tripped one of the motion sensors,” he replied, his face seeming to lose all its color in an instant. “Something in one of the storerooms behind the duty free.”

  “Probably another false alarm, huh?”

  He continued to stare at the stores for a moment, before looking down at his phone and tapping to end the alarm. The fear was once more starting to creep through his gut, and he was struggling to stay calm.

  “Probably,” he muttered. “I'm sure -”

  Suddenly the alarm rang out again.

  “Maybe we should check it out,” Casey suggested. “You know, just to be sure?”

  Tom hesitated, before turning to her again.

  “You go,” he said finally.

  “Me?”

  “It's probably nothing. I mean, who'd break into an airport bookstore in the middle of the night? You won't find anything, but you should check. I'll go take a look at the top of the departure gates, just to make sure that everything's fine up there.”

  “Oh, I already -”

  “And then I'll meet you back at the office,” he added, before turning and hurrying away before she even had a chance to remind him that she'd already checked as far as gate thirty at the very end of the terminal building. In fact, he didn't even look over his shoulder as he hurried across the atrium and made his way toward the doors that led through to the security control room.

  Before he reached those doors, however, he glanced toward the window overlooking the tarmac, and he froze for a moment as he saw that a thick snowstorm had arrived. Transfixed by the sight of all the snow swirling through the air, he took a few steps toward the window, staring out at the dark parked planes and watching as snow continued to fall. Slowly, however, his eyes began to refocus, and he saw his own reflection in the window.

  And the reflections of twenty or thirty more people all standing right behind him.

  Startled, he turned and looked around, but now there was no-one. He checked the window again, and this time the only reflection was his own.

  ***

  “Hello?” Casey called out as she peered into yet another stockroom. “Anyone up to no good in here?”

  She waited, but all she saw were large cardboard boxes piled against the walls. Seeing that one of the boxes was open, she headed over and peered inside at the packs of perfume. She'd never been one for making herself smell all fancy, but she couldn't help reaching in and taking out one of the bottles, holding it up to the light and then giving it a quick sniff.

  “Very pink,” she muttered. “Not really my -”

  “Please don't shoot me!”

  Startled, she spun around and saw that a man was standing on the other side of the room, holding his hands up as if in surrender. In the process, she accidentally let the bottle slip from her hand and smash against the floor.

  “Who are you?” she asked, already reaching for her phone.

  “I work here!” David stammered, pointing at the name badge on his shirt. “I'm the manager of this store! See? I work here, I swear. Just don't shoot me!”

  “What are you doing here?” she continued. “Sir, it's gone midnight. I don't care what store you manage, you're not supposed to be here after midnight. I'm pretty sure there are rules about that sort of thing.”

  “I know,” he replied, taking a step closer. “I'm really sorry, truly I am, I just...”

  His voice trailed off for a moment.

  “You just what?” she asked. “Let me see your clearance and your security pass.”

&n
bsp; Fishing through his pockets, David pulled out his wallet and handed it to Casey. Taking a look inside, she examined the various cards and passes, taking care to slip each out of its protective covering so she could make sure it was genuine. In truth, she wasn't entirely sure what she was supposed to be checking for, but the cards and passes certainly looked pretty genuine and she was starting to think that the story checked out.

  “You can check the staff database,” he continued, with his hands once more raised. “I have full clearance, I'm allowed to be on the premises. Maybe not quite so late, but that's not exactly a crime, is it?”

  “It might be,” she replied, before closing the wallet and handing it back to him. “How did you get past the sensors in the delivery bay?”

  “You mean the ones the delivery drivers deactivated last year, because they kept setting them off by accident whenever they so much as turned a truck around?”

  “That doesn't sound very safe and secure,” she pointed out with a sigh. “What is it with this place?”

  “No, I don't suppose it is. But they found that if you stick a pencil in both sides of the sensor, it stops working and it doesn't send an error code back to the system. Please, I don't want any trouble. I'll make them take the pencils out in the morning, I swear.”

  “See to it that you do,” Casey replied with a sigh. “And put your hands down. I'm not going to shoot you. I don't even have a gun.”

  Slowly and cautiously, David lowered his hands to his sides.

  “I'm sorry I broke a bottle of your fancy perfume,” she added.

  “Please, think no more of it.”

  “So what exactly are you doing here?”

  “I have been asking myself that question ever since I came through the door half an hour ago,” he explained. “The truth is, I guess I should have waited until morning and done it when I started my shift, but I think I would've gone insane. Would it be okay if I show you something?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Heading over to one of the shelves, he reached to the back and fiddling with something, before pulling out a small black camera with a trailing wire.

  “What's that for?” Casey asked.

  “It's a little camera I set up last week, to catch whoever was stealing my stock. It did the job just fine, but then when I was reviewing the footage I found that it had caught something else. I know this is going to sound crazy, and you probably think I'm some kind of nut-job, but I swear I'm telling the truth.”

  “I'm not sure you're allowed to set up your own ad hoc surveillance system on airport premises,” she told him.

  “I know, I know, but...” He hesitated for a moment. “The camera was set up to record in the dark, using infrared. For a while, I thought maybe one of you guys from security was the thief. Obviously I know that's not the case now. I caught the person responsible and fired her. But the thing is, the camera records for fifteen seconds whenever it detects movement in its field of view. Basically, it covers this entire stockroom all the way to the door.”

  “So you caught your thief?” Casey replied.

  He nodded.

  “But that's not all,” he said cautiously. “I have a computer in my office. Would you let me show you what else I caught on camera?”

  ***

  “There I am,” Casey muttered a short while later, watching the jerky, low-quality infrared recording of herself from her first shift a couple of nights earlier. “That's me just checking the place out.”

  “Do you notice anything unusual?” David asked.

  “My uniform doesn't fit very well. The pants are too baggy.”

  “Anything else? Anything near where you're standing?”

  Watching the screen, Casey saw herself standing in the brightly-lit doorway, shining a flashlight into the dark stockroom. She remembered that exact moment, and how creepy she'd found the quiet terminal building during her very first night on duty. Already, she felt as if she'd become much more used to the place. Finally, she saw herself swing the door shut, leaving the room in darkness before the recording cut off.

  “Did you see it?”

  “I saw myself,” she told him. “Was there supposed to be something else?”

  “You didn't see it?”

  “See what?” she asked, feeling a gnawing sense of fear in her gut.

  “I'll play it again. This time, pay attention to the door while you've got it open.”

  He played the footage a second time. Casey watched herself opening the door and shining the flashlight into the room, and this time she noticed that as she turned the flashlight, there was a blur of light just next to her arm. She waited until the footage was over, and then she turned to David.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “Well what?”

  “You still didn't see it?”

  “I saw some lens flare, but -”

  “That wasn't lens flare.”

  He dragged the slider to the start and began to play it again. As soon as it showed Casey opening the door, however, he tapped to freeze the image.

  “It's just me,” she pointed out.

  “So far.”

  He tapped to move the footage forward a frame at a time, presenting a jerky, slow-motion shot of Casey shining her flashlight around the storeroom. He kept a finger on the mouse button, however, and this time he paused again just as the blur appeared.

  “It's a blur,” Casey pointed out.

  “And the next frame?” he asked, as he moved the footage forward by just one single frame.

  “Still a blur.”

  “And the next?”

  She watched the screen. Now the blur seemed just a little more substantial, as if it had more of a shape as it manifested next to her elbow, but it was still very much a blur.

  “Sir,” she said with a sigh, “I'm not sure that this is the best use of either of our -”

  Suddenly she froze as he moved to the next frame, and this time she saw that the blur had become more solid somehow, with two dark patches that looked a lot like a pair of eyes. She opened her mouth to tell him that there was no reason to be concerned, but the more she stared at the screen, the more she realized that in this particular frame the blur seemed to have a face and a body. Still hoping to dismiss the whole thing as a hoax, she squinted slightly and peered more closely at the screen, and in turn the little girl's eyes seemed almost to stare right back out at her.

  “It's a child,” David pointed out.

  “Well, I think that's a bit of a stretch, don't you?” she asked uncertainly, already doubting the words as they fell from her lips. The more she stared at the screen, the more she realized that she really could see a girl's face.

  “And I've seen her too,” David continued. “Actually in front of me, with my own two eyes.”

  She turned to him. “Where?”

  “Not here. Out in the forest, near the memorial to the victims of the disaster.”

  He moved the footage onto the next frame, and now the girl's face was slightly clearer.

  “It's her,” Casey whispered.

  “You recognize her too?”

  “I...” She paused. “No, I mean, all kids look alike, don't they? Especially...”

  “Where did you see her?” he asked.

  “I don't know. I can't be sure. I had a very vivid dream, but dreams don't mean anything, right? This is just a big coincidence.”

  He moved the footage on a little, but the blur faded and was gone by the time two more frames had passed.

  “There are cameras all over this airport,” Casey pointed out, taking a step back. “Why would some ghostly little girl only show up on your camera, in your storeroom, with -”

  “It's infrared,” he pointed out, interrupting her. “I don't know, maybe that has something to do with it. Maybe it has nothing to do with it. But you can't deny what we both just saw on that footage. So now maybe you understand why I came here tonight.”

  “To double-check?”

  “To remove the camera. To get ri
d of it, so that I never have to worry about it again. You saw the image, you saw that the girl's eyes were looking right at the camera. Well, I don't want to draw her attention to me. As far as I'm concerned, this is over. I only showed you because I figured you should know. I mean, I'd want someone to show me, if I was the one who'd been followed around an empty building by whatever that thing is.”

  Turning, Casey looked back across the office, watching for a moment in case there was any further sign of the girl.

  “I also felt it was my duty to inform someone,” David continued. “You know what they say about this airport. There's a ghost watching over everyone here, and she tries to warn people if something bad is going to happen. She was seen several times before the disaster ten years ago, and now she's appearing again, almost as if... Well, I'm sure you get the idea. And when she's seen, other ghosts are seen too. I'm worried that something's going to happen, and that the warnings are going to be missed again. But at the same time, I know that if I try to draw anyone's attention to this, I'll get laughed out of my job. I mean, it's probably nothing, right?”

  They stood in silence for a moment, as if neither of them wanted to be the one who answered that question.

  “But I've done my duty now,” David added finally, with a hint of relief. “It's your problem now.”

  “I'm sorry?”

  “You're part of the security team, right?” he continued. “Well, I've told you, and now you have to decide what to do next. Just don't mention me in any of your reports, okay? I know this probably sounds cowardly, but I don't want to end up like Jimmy Clark, laughed at and mocked and ignored and drinking alone during the day.”

  “I'm sorry, who are you talking about?”

  “I've done my part,” he added, holding his hands up. “I can sleep peacefully now. If anything happens, it's not my fault.”

  “Sir,” she replied, “I still don't -”

  Suddenly Casey's phone started ringing. Taking a look at the screen, she saw that Tom was trying to get through.