by Cross, Amy
“Hey,” she said as she answered, “sorry, I'm -”
“Help me!” he stammered, his voice filled with panic. “Casey, please help me!”
Chapter Eleven
“Tom, what the hell have you been doing?” Casey shouted, as she finally managed to force the door open, pushing aside the various chairs and tables that had been used to keep it shut. “Did you barricade yourself in here?”
As she and David stepped into the security office, they saw that Tom was cowering under the main desk, trembling with fear. The tea table had been overturned, leaving all the precious teabags strewn across the floor along with chunks of several broken mugs, and pages had been ripped from the logbook and left crumpled on the desk.
“Shut the door!” Tom stammered. “Shut it now!”
“Tom -”
“For God's sake, shut the door!”
Casey pushed the door shut, before stepping over to the desk and crouching down to get a better look at Tom.
“They followed me,” he explained, barely able to get the words out since he was shaking so badly. “There were more and more of them. I don't know what they want, but they were right out there in the corridor. I've seen them before, but never like this, they never came after me! I didn't know what else to do, but I'm not crazy, I swear! It's them, they're here and even the pills won't make them go away!”
“No-one's saying you're crazy,” she replied, reaching under the desk and putting a hand on his shoulder. “Why don't you come out from there so we can talk?”
He shook his head.
“I'll make you a nice cup of Yorkshire tea,” she continued. “Doesn't that sound good?”
“Didn't you see them?” he asked, his eyes wide with fear. “They were everywhere!”
“Who were, Tom!”
“Them! The passengers!”
“There are no passengers here right now, Tom. It's the middle of the night. The passengers won't start arriving until about six in the morning.”
“Not those passengers!” he hissed. “The ones who never left, the ones who died on the...”
His voice trailed off for a moment, and then he started whispering to himself, repeating his manta about there being no such thing as ghosts. His voice was trembling, however, and finally he broke into a series of sobs.
Casey leaned closer, trying to make out what he was saying, and then she got to her feet. Tapping the control panel, she began searching through the footage.
“Should I call an ambulance for him?” David whispered, stepping closer.
“Just wait a moment.”
“What are you doing?”
Bringing up the footage from the camera in the corridor outside, Casey rewound until she spotted Tom. Tapping to play, she watched as he stumbled along the corridor, seemingly shouting at someone and then backing away from the far end as if he could see something that wasn't showing up on the footage. As the footage continued, she began to realize that he certainly looked crazy.
“He seems a little...” David hesitated, before leaning closer and whispering to her. “Is he alright in the head?”
Without answering, Casey watched the screen as Tom backed slowly into the room and shut the door. A moment later, she peered back under the desk and saw that he was fumbling with a bottle of pills.
“Hey!” she said, reaching down and taking the pills, checking the label. “Careful with those. Maybe you shouldn't take too many. What are they for, anyway?”
“They make the passengers go away!”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don't want to see them again!” he told her, trying to grab the bottle. “It usually works with two, but this time I need more! Maybe I need the whole bottle! They're for anxiety!”
“I don't think you should be wolfing them down,” she replied. “Tom, are you telling me that this isn't the first time you've seen things at the airport?”
“You don't understand!”
“But you're the one who kept telling me that these things weren't real. Was that just your way of trying to persuade yourself that you hadn't really seen anything?”
“I'm going to call an ambulance,” David muttered.
“Wait!” Getting to her feet, Casey pulled him aside. “He could lose his job if they think he's got some kind of psychological problem. This might just be a one-off incident. He's a good guy, a really good guy, and I don't want to get him into any kind of trouble.”
“So what are you going to do?”
She checked her watch. “It's already three. If I send him home, I can handle the rest of the shift alone. Maybe he just needs a nap.”
“But -”
“I don't see any other options right now,” she pointed out. “This is my third shift, I can't start writing about ghosts and weird things caught on camera, not in the logbook! And I'm sure nothing's going to happen. The airport has security rules, at least during the day, so accidents are almost impossible. This whole thing about ghosts is a case of hysteria.”
“Do you really think that?” David asked. “Even after I showed you the footage?”
“That was a fluke.”
“You saw the face!”
“I saw a blur that looked like a face,” she replied with a sigh. “Listen, there are two possibilities here. One is that a bunch of ghosts are trying to warn us about an impending disaster. The other is that a group of people have gotten the wrong end of a few sticks, and now we're in danger of egging each other over the precipice. Call me nuts, but I think that last option is way more likely than the first. Unless you really think Hexley Airport is going to be the place where ghosts finally turn out to be real. I mean, come on, think about it. The most likely explanation is that it's all a lot of hot air.”
“Then why is your supervisor cowering under the desk?”
Turning, she saw that Tom was indeed still down there, still muttering to himself. She opened her mouth to say that he wasn't crazy, but in truth she had to admit that at that particular moment he looked more than crazy.
“I'm sure he'll be back to his old self soon,” she said finally. “People get a little funny sometimes. It's how the world works.” Sighing again, she checked her phone. “If I call a taxi to take him home, would you be able to go out with him to the front of the building and wait until it gets here? I kind of want to fix this room and then make sure everything's okay. And maybe you should go in the taxi with him. Go home, get some sleep, and this'll all seem less weird in the morning.”
“But -”
“Please? I need to get things back under control here.”
“I don't think this situation will ever not feel weird,” David muttered. “I just hope you're right. I hope we've all been overreacting to a load of shadows.”
“It has to be that,” Casey replied. “It just has to be.”
Half an hour later, having finally coaxed Tom out from under the table and called a taxi, and having persuaded David to take him out to the front of the building so they could leave together, Casey stood alone in the control room. She'd put all the tables and chairs back in their proper places, and she'd rearranged the camera feeds on the monitors so that they offered her a better view of the entire terminal building. She'd also noted in the logbook that Tom had gone home early due to illness, while avoiding getting into any specifics. And now that she'd restored a little order to the control room, she was simply watching the monitors.
On one of the screens, she could see David and Tom waiting outside. A moment later, she saw a taxi pull up and she breathed a sigh of relief.
Turning, she grabbed her jacket from the wall and then headed out for another routine patrol of the terminal building. As she made her way along the corridor, she was completely unaware of the little girl who was once again following her every step.
***
“Yeah, that's the address,” David told the taxi driver, handing him the note along with enough money to cover the journey into town. “His wife's expecting him. Thanks for comi
ng out so late.”
“And he's alright, yeah?” the driver asked, glancing dubiously at Tom.
“He'll be fine. He just needs to get home.”
Pushing the door shut, David leaned down and saw that Tom was slumped on the back seat, looking totally broken. He knocked on the window, but Tom failed to respond, so finally he stepped back as the taxi pulled away. Left all alone outside the front of the terminal building, he reached into his pocket and checked that he still had the keys to the second car, and then he began to wander past the luggage trolleys, heading toward the section of the parking lot that was reserved for airport workers. Heavy snow was falling, and strong wind was rattling through the roof of a nearby hangar, whistling as it rushed between narrow gaps.
A few minutes later, reaching his car, he unlocked the door and began to climb inside, only to stop and turn as he heard a faint bumping sound nearby. Looking across the lot, he finally spotted a dark, silhouetted figure walking past the fence.
After hesitating for a moment, David pushed the door shut and stepped around the car, watching until the figure disappeared into the shadows at the far end of the fence. Checking his watch, he saw that it was still far too early for any of the regular workers to be arriving for their shifts, so he made his way across the parking lot and over to the fence. There was no sign of the figure now, but still he headed along the length of the fence until he reached the spot at which the figure had slipped away into the shadows. There was a gate nearby, but he knew he'd have heard if anyone had gone through, and he was certain nobody could have climbed over the top. Not with all that barbed wire.
He looked through the fence, toward the vast and deserted tarmac. Snow was swirling through the air, and after a moment David's attention was drawn to the bright lights of the terminal building. As he watched, he spotted a figure inside, walking past one of the windows, but even from this distance he could tell that it was just Casey on her routine patrol. For a moment he felt sorry for her, all alone in that huge building, but he figured she seemed to know what she was doing. He waited until she'd passed out of view, and then he turned to go back to his car.
Suddenly he heard a rustling sound nearby, as if something was being dragged through the bushes at the edge of the parking lot.
Taking a step closer, he squinted as he tried to get a better view in the darkness, and after a moment he saw that one of the bushes was swaying slightly, as if it had been recently disturbed. Stopping, he waited in case the sound returned, but all he heard now was the wind and the rustle of falling snow. A moment later, he spotted a bike leaning against the fence, as if it had been placed at the darker end of the parking lot so that it wouldn't be noticed. Heading over to take a closer look, he saw that the bike was unsecured, despite the signs nearby warning about possible thefts.
Finally, he reached into his pocket and took out his phone, quickly bringing up Casey's number.
“That's mine!” a voice said suddenly, behind him.
Startled, David turned and saw a silhouetted figure trudging toward him through the snow.
“Sorry,” the voice continued. “Didn't mean to spook you.”
“No, it's fine,” David replied, with the phone still in his hand and his finger poised just millimeters from calling Casey. “I just... Do you work here?”
“I sure do. I know I'm not supposed to be here this late, but when I got home after my shift, I started to worry that I might have left a burner on in the office. I told myself I was just worrying about nothing, but you know how it is. I couldn't settle, so finally I decided I'd have to come all the way back and check.” He sighed. “I feel like such an idiot. Of course, when I got here I found that the burners were off, just like they should've been. It's not the first time I've done that, either. You know how it is, right?”
“Sure,” David said cautiously. He paused for a moment, before dismissing Casey's number and slipping the phone away. He still couldn't see the man's face properly, but he figured the explanation made sense.
“Here's my pass,” the man replied, holding up his security card for David to see.
“Derek Muir,” David read from the card. “Well, I can give you a lift into town if you like, Derek. With the way this weather's going, you might not want to be out on your bike.”
“That's very kind of you,” Derek replied. “I'd be really grateful. If you don't mind, though, could you help me with something first? It's just a little heavy, and I need help carrying.”
David hesitated for a moment, before shrugging.
“Sure. What's up?”
As Derek began to lead David toward the gate, Casey could just about be seen in the distance, still patrolling the terminal building all alone.
***
“Wow, this place is huge!” he said a few minutes later, as he followed Derek into the darkened hangar. Looking up at the nose of the airliner, he seemed momentarily dazed by the way it loomed above him. “You know, I'm no plane-spotter or anything like that, but I've got to admit I think these things are pretty beautiful. Graceful, almost.”
Ahead of him, Derek made his way through the shadows, heading toward the office door in the far corner.
“I wanted to be a pilot when I was younger,” David continued, making his way along the side of the plane and stopping for a moment to peer into one of the huge engines. “I never really pursued it, of course. Maybe I should have. Maybe in a parallel universe right now, I'm flying the world for one of the big airline companies. Wings on my jacket, that sort of thing. Still, I shouldn't complain. I have things pretty good.”
He leaned a little further into the engine, squinting to get a better look.
“I guess I'd be in trouble if this thing suddenly turned on, huh?” he added finally. “Has that ever happened? I know you hear stories about people getting sucked into the engines, but I guess no-one's so stupid that they'd ever get so close when one's on, are they?”
He hesitated, before stepping around the side of the engine and seeing no sign of Derek. After a moment, however, he spotted the office door in the corner, with a crack of light showing from underneath.
“Chatty guy,” he muttered, before making his way toward the door across the vast, empty hangar. He couldn't help looking over his shoulder, glancing back at the airliner, and by the time he reached the door there was a very faint hint of regret in his eyes, as if he couldn't help thinking about the life he could have lived if he'd followed his dreams. A moment later, however, he forced a smile as he remembered the little girl waiting at home for him.
Pushing the door open, he looked into the office but found that although the lights were on, there was no sign of Derek.
“Hello?” he called out, stepping inside. “What was it you wanted help with, exactly? Sorry, I don't mean to rush you, it's just that I want to get home and... Well, you know how it is, right? Sometimes you just want to be with your family.”
He waited, but all he heard was silence.
“Hello?”
No reply.
“Huh.” Wandering over to the nearest table, he looked down and spotted some technical drawings. He tilted his head a little, trying to make sense of what they were showing, although all he could really make out were what appeared to be a series of tubes and pipes with scribbled annotations. Or maybe they were screws and blocks. “So are you working on something?” he called out, still assuming that Derek was nearby, perhaps in a side-room. “Got some kind of project on the go?”
Moving one of the drawings aside, he saw another image, this time showing the side of a plane.
“It always amazes me how you guys do it all,” he continued. “I mean, you must have to be so careful. You can't really afford to make any mistakes, not with the lives of so many people on the line. I know you probably have systems in place to make sure you don't screw up, but still, I guess it takes a special kind of person to be able to live with so much pressure and responsibility. I've watched that Air Crash Investigation show a few times. It's mind-boggling
how complex these planes are.” He took a look at a couple more drawings, none of which made any sense to him. “And here I am, stressing about a few boxes of perfume going missing. I guess I should learn a little perspective.”
After putting the drawings back how he'd found them, he turned and looked back across the office.
“I don't think we're even supposed to be here,” he pointed out. “Not this late. Listen, I really don't want to be a nag, but it's cold and the weather's only going to get worse, and I really just want to get home and go to bed. Do you think we could hurry this whole thing along a little?”
No reply.
“Derek?”
Making his way back across the room, he looked through the door and saw that there was no sign of anyone in the hangar. He waited a moment, in case someone might step into view, but now he was starting to feel a little worried. He knew that technically they weren't supposed to be in the hangar at all, and Derek had just vanished after they arrived. He wanted to leave, but he figured he couldn't just abandon the guy.
“Derek?” he called out.
He turned and looked back into the office, before a loud bump rang out from somewhere over near the plane. Turning, he listened as the hanger returned to silence, and then he began to make his way over.
“Hey man,” he continued, “do you need help or not?”
As he got closer to the plane, he saw that a panel near the rear had been left open. Stepping over to take a closer look, he was just about able to make out various wires hanging down inside, although he had no idea what they were for. A moment later, his foot nudged against something on the floor, and when he looked down he saw a wrench that someone had left behind. He reached down and picked it up, finding that it was surprisingly heavy. Checking his watch, he saw that he was out much later than he'd planned, so he set the wrench back down and made his way around the side of the engine.
“Derek!” he yelled, raising his voice in an attempt to be heard all around the hangar. “Where are you? I said I'd help you with something, but I can't wait all night. Either we're doing this or...”
