Lazar

by Lawrence Heath

  “You – you’ve changed your clothes,” Jan stammered.

  “So have you,” Margaret replied without expression.

  “Yes, but…” Jan’s voice faded away, but her open mouth expressed her complete and utter surprise more eloquently than any words it might have uttered.

  “You like my clothes, don’t you?” Margaret appeared to be discomforted by Jan’s reaction. Her thin white fingers toyed agitatedly with the lock of hair that she had pulled across her face.

  “Yes, but…” Jan attempted to restart her sentence. “You were wearing the same as me this morning, and now we’re wearing the same again.” Jan looked at Margaret, then down at herself, holding out the hem of her brightly coloured shorts to emphasise the matching patterns. “This morning I thought it was just an odd coincidence, but this afternoon…” Her words dried up in spite of the torrent of thoughts flooding through her brain. Had Margaret been spying on her? Had she followed her back to her aunt and uncle’s house? How had she got hold of a matching set of clothes so quickly? Was Hal in on it – was this another one of his jokes?

  “I wore these clothes because I thought you liked them,” Jan heard Margaret explain.

  Jan looked up immediately and stared straight into the face of this strange, unnerving girl. Half of it was obscured by the curtain of tousled hair, but out of the other shone an eye of fragile blue. Jan’s look of interrogating puzzlement met one of uncertainty and fear. A tear welled up in Margaret’s eye.

  “I wore these clothes because I thought you liked them,” she repeated quietly, then turned to walk away.

  “No, no, don’t go,” Jan cried, and reached out and touched her elbow. She’s real enough, she thought. What nonsense Hal had been talking – ghosts indeed.

  Margaret stopped, but kept her back turned toward Jan.

  “Don’t go,” Jan reassured her friend. “There’s so much I want to talk to you about.” She heard herself laugh nervously. “It’s just that it’s so amazing to meet someone whose taste in clothes is exactly the same as my own. You’ve got to admit, it is one heck of a coincidence.”

  “I’m not a believer in coincidence,” Margaret said without turning. “I prefer to call it fate – like your finding the other half of my ring.”

  Jan found her feelings toward Margaret changing by the second. At first she had found her unsettling. It was difficult to communicate with someone who would not show her face. And then there was her habit of fiddling with her hair. Jan was beginning to find this affectation of coyness really, really annoying. But she could not remain annoyed for long. There was something in the girl’s demeanour, the sadness in her eyes, that prompted profound and heartfelt pity. The poor girl was so lonely, so desperate for friendship. So desperate, in fact, that Jan could almost feel the sympathy tangibly flowing from her fingertips as she touched the strange girl’s arm. It was as though it was being sucked out of her and avariciously soaked up by a dried-out, shrivelled … something. Jan felt an aching emptiness open up within her.

  As though sensing this haemorrhaging of Jan’s emotions, Margaret straightened up and assumed an air of self-assurance.

  “Have you been to the museum?” she asked, once again unnerving Jan with a seemingly innocent question.

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  “I’ve been following you since you left,” Margaret answered casually as she began to saunter up the lane. So she had been following me, thought Jan. What is she playing at?

  “I tried to attract you attention.”

  “What?”

  “I tried to attract your attention,” Margaret explained, “but your mind was elsewhere.”

  There was something interrogatory about the girl’s explanation that appeared to demand an answer from Jan.

  “Yes,” she stuttered, “Yes, I was miles away. I was studying these picture of Old Wickwich.” She held up her smartphone to show Margaret. She ignored it.

  “Of course, you must have seen the model loads of times – you living here. How much of it do you reckon is just guesswork?”

  “Most of it.”

  “Do you think so? That’s a shame. We – my cousin Hal and I, that is – we were hoping to use it to recreate the old town on his computer.”

  “Recreate it?”

  “Yes, sort of. Hal’s got this amazing bit of software – though don’t tell him that I told you so – that can build things in three dimensions…”

  “Recreate it!”

  Jan looked sideways at the girl, but could only see a mat of dishevelled hair. She tried to explain again.

  “You know, like in the films and computer games where they have computer-generated graphics that make things look real, like they really exist. We’re trying to do that with Old Wickwich – make it look real. Why don’t you come back with me and have a look. I’m sure you’d be able to help us rebuild it. You must know more about Old Wickwich than we do.”

  Margaret’s head turned briefly toward Jan. The eye was smiling.

  “Come on then, it’s only a little way up the road.”

  Margaret was already walking in the direction Jan was pointing.

  The house appeared to be empty when they arrived. Jan called out, but no one answered, so she led the way upstairs to Hal’s bedroom. Margaret followed.

  Hal was nowhere to be seen. The only movement in the room was his image of the chapel turning slowly round its axis on the screen.

  “What is that?” Margaret asked, pointing straight at Hal’s computer.

  “What? Do you mean the computer?” Jan frowned and smiled simultaneously. “You’re having me on. You must have seen one of those before. Even Wickwich isn’t that cut off from civilisation.”

  Margaret walked right up to the screen.

  “Why does it have the Lazar?”

  Jan looked perplexed.

  “To print things, – what else? Though I think it’s an inkjet, actually.”

  Margaret began to shake. Her fingers wound themselves tight around the knot of hair and pulled it even tighter across her face, as though trying hard to disguise her agitation.

  “The Lazar,” she persisted and began rocking gently to and fro.

  “Why on earth are you getting so excited about a printer?” Jan asked, more than a little concerned.

  Margaret turned immediately and fixed Jan with a stare.

  “The Lazar.” she insisted.

  Jan stepped backward, completely flustered by the indignant tone in Margaret’s voice. She stuttered as she excused herself.

  “Er … I’ll just pop upstairs to get some books I got from the museum,” Jan said, desperately trying to change the subject. “They might help explain what we’re doing.”

  She retreated quickly through the door, turned immediately and ran up to her room.

  Hal had thought he heard Jan’s voice as he came up the stairs from the kitchen, so was not surprised to see her sitting at his computer as he entered his bedroom. He was surprised to find her on her own, though. Who had she been talking to?

  He walked toward her. She did not turn. She appeared to be absorbed in the image on the screen. As he reached her, he noticed that her fingertips were poised above the keyboard.

  “Hey, careful,” he admonished. “Don’t touch anything. I haven’t done a backup yet.”

  He looked down at his cousin – only, it wasn’t her.

  “Oh, sorry, I thought you were Jan,” he blurted out, blushing slightly. “You must be Margaret – what do you reckon?” He nodded toward the screen.

  Margaret did not seem to hear him. She just stared straight ahead as her fingers began to tap down on the keys.

  “Er – I’d rather you didn’t do that.” Hal tried to inject some menace into his voice, but failed. He resorted to reason. “That’s a very sophisticated piece of software. If you don’t know what you’re doing you could…”

  Margaret turned toward him.

  For once she did not raise her hand to pull her hair across her face.r />
  Hal started backward, then tried to recover his composure – although he was aware that he could not completely disguise the expression of repulsion he could feel upon his face.

  “Oh, my … er … I’ll be back in a minute – I’m just going to try and find out where Jan’s got to,” he blustered awkwardly as he withdrew from his room. As soon as he had retreated through the doorway he turned and broke into a run toward the stairs.

  There was somebody behind him. They were calling out his name.

  “Hal! Hal! Are you alright?”

  He paused and looked back over his shoulder. It was Jan. She was bounding down the narrow staircase from the guest room. He turned to face her.

  “You could have warned me,” he hissed.

  Jan stopped dead in her tracks outside Hal’s bedroom.

  “Warned you of what?”

  “That she hasn’t got a nose.”

  “Who hasn’t got a nose?”

  “Your friend Margaret – half her nose and lips are missing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, half her nose and lips are missing!”

  “If this is another one of your stupid jokes…” Jan turned on her heel and marched straight into Hal’s bedroom.

  It was empty.

  “Where’s she gone?” Hal looked accusingly at Jan.

  “I don’t know. I left her here and went looking for you.”

  Hal went over to the chair where Margaret had been sitting at his computer. He looked carefully at the screen for a moment, then turned toward Jan, his frown of accusation turning to one of interrogation.

  “This is a wind-up, isn’t it? You’ve planned this with her to get your own back on me for the fright I gave you with the skeletons. I bet she’s in one of the wardrobes wiping joke-shop make-up off her face.”

  Hal rushed over to the wardrobes and began throwing open the doors.

  “I haven’t plotted anything with anyone – I wouldn’t be so childish,” Jan retorted. “And in any case, it wasn’t make-up. I think she really has got a birthmark or something – she was always looking away from me or playing with her hair and pulling it across her face. I thought she was just painfully shy. That’s probably why she hasn’t got any friends, why she’s so lonely … why she’s run away. She’s upset because you’ve seen her whole face.”

  “She’s upset. How do you think I feel?” Hal slammed the wardrobe doors shut. “It was a bit of a shock when she turned and stared at me like that.” He peered around his room, trying to identify any other possible hiding places. His bed caught his eye; he fell to his knees and pushed his head and shoulders underneath it. His muffled voice came up through the mattress. “Where on earth has she gone?”

  Jan sat down in the chair and gazed at the rotating chapel on the screen.

  “Perhaps she was a ghost,” she said, half to herself.

  “Rubbish.” Hal emerged from underneath the bed, brushing dust off the front of his T-shirt. “There aren’t such things – though she was certainly scary enough to be one.”

  Jan snapped out of her reverie, but still looked deep in thought.

  “What did she look like?”

  “Eh?”

  “I know it sounds odd, but I don’t think I ever really saw her face – she was always standing in the shadows or with the sun behind her, or else playing with her hair.”

  “Think yourself lucky,” Hal commented as he got up and sat on the edge of his bed. “She was … ugh!” He shuddered at the recollection of her face, then remembered something else. He let out a short laugh and shook his head in disbelief. “What an idiot,” he said, chastising himself. “It was you all along, wasn’t it?”

  He stared hard at Jan, scrutinising every feature of her face.

  “It was you. You were wearing make-up – and I fell for it. You really had me going there for a…”

  “Think about it, Hal,” Jan interrupted in a tone of patronising irritation. Hal stopped in mid-sentence and gaped at his cousin, completely unable to follow the point of Jan’s interjection.

  “Think about it, Hal,” Jan repeated slowly and deliberately, “who did you bump into when you ran out of this room?”

  “But I didn’t bump into you, did I?” Hal retorted, “you were behind me.” He emphasised the point. “Behind me. You’d come out of my room.”

  “Yes…”

  “Aha!”

  “I mean yes, I was behind you, but no, I hadn’t just come out of your room. You saw me. I was coming down the stairs from my bedroom.”

  Hal stood thinking for a moment, then smiled and slowly nodded his head.

  “Yeah!” he said in apparent admiration. “Very clever. You ran out of my room, halfway up the stairs, then turned and called my name and started running back down again …” Hal was watching his cousin carefully, to see whether she would show any sign of admission of guilt, but was unable to reach the end of his sentence before bursting into laughter.

  “OK,” he conceded, when he had stopped, “so it was a pretty dumb theory. But it could have been you sitting there. I thought it was you when I first came into the room. Same colour hair, same clothes … same grass stain down the trouser leg, come to think of it.”

  He frowned, but not half as much as Jan.

  “Say that again,” she said, incredulously.

  “She was wearing exactly – and I mean exactly – the same clothes as you had on this morning. Like you said she did. Why?”

  “Because, when I left her,” Jan explained, quietly, “she was wearing exactly what I’m wearing now.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I thought I was.” Hal stared into the middle distance as he went over his encounter with Margaret in his mind.

  Jan sat down next to him and opened one of the books from her bedroom that she was still holding in her hand. She turned to the index then thumbed determinedly through the pages. She soon found what she was looking for.

  “Yes!” she hissed, softly but triumphantly. She glanced briefly at her cousin, to make sure that he had heard her, then began to read aloud.

  “For a location so steeped in myth and legend, Wickwich is strangely lacking in ghosts. Other than the story of the ancient city itself, rising from the sea in spectral form to the sound of its own church bells every July 29th, the only other recorded sighting of a ghost is that of a young girl in the vicinity of old St James’ Church. It is not known who she is, or why she walks the earth, but those who have seen her describe her as ‘a lost soul, searching desperately for something or someone’.”

  “See? She is a ghost,” Jan was exultant, then defensive. “And before you say anything, no, I hadn’t read that before. I didn’t know anything about any ghost until just then, and I most certainly did not invent Margaret as a wind-up…”

  “OK, OK, I believe you,” Hal half conceded, “but I don’t believe she’s a ghost. There are no such things, for a start, and it wouldn’t explain her change of clothes even if there were.

  “And in any case,” he continued, “she was solid, wasn’t she? She certainly looked it to me. And it was you who told me that she’d given you a hand-up when you fell down into the ditch – and she gave you her half of the ring to hold.”

  Hal leant back on the bed and waited for Jan’s answer.

  “Well, yes, but…” she stumbled. “Perhaps – perhaps she just made me think she’d helped me up and handed me the ring. Perhaps that’s what ghosts do – make you think things.”

  Hal looked at his cousin for a second, then leapt to his feet.

  “Yes, that’s it! You’ve got it in one. We only think we’ve seen her – just like you thought you saw those skeletons in the chapel on my computer – she isn’t really there – or here. Or whatever. She only exists in a sort of virtual reality. Ghosts are just virtual people.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you see?” Hal said excitedly, as he warmed to his new theory. “A ghost is like
a computer virus, but instead of affecting computers it gets inside our brains and affects our senses – it makes us think we’ve seen or heard or touched someone who isn’t really there. The one we’ve caught is the ‘Margaret’ virus. It made you think you held her hand in the same way that a virtual glove would make it feel as though you had.”

  Hal stopped enthusing for a moment and looked straight at his cousin. He could see that she was trying hard to find fault with his argument. He carried on.

  “It also explains why each of us saw her dressed differently. The virus had to delve into our memories to find clothes for the virtual image to wear – it pulled out different outfits from each of our data banks.”

  Jan gaped at her cousin in utter disbelief.

  “I don’t understand you, Hal,” she said, waving the booklet in front of him. “Why can’t you simply accept that Margaret is a ghost? Why do you have to come up with all this computer virus nonsense? Can’t you see? She’s not a virtual person – Margaret’s a real person whose spirit cannot rest.”

  “That’s all very romantic,” retorted Hal, “but it’s hardly logical.”

  “And your explanation is, I suppose?”

  “At least it’s an explanation.”

  “No it’s not. It doesn’t explain why her spirit can’t rest, why she haunts St James’ churchyard.”

  “I’m not bothered about the ‘why’. It’s the ‘how’ that interests me. The computer virus idea explains…” Hal suddenly broke off and rushed over to his computer. “Oh, no! A virus…” he muttered to himself. “She was touching my computer.”

  He bent over and stabbed frenetically at the keyboard, staring intently at the images that flashed past on the screen.

  “Phew, thank goodness,” he sighed explosively after several seconds. “Everything seems to be OK. Hold on, what’s that?”

  He pulled the chair across and sat down without taking his eyes off the screen. He focussed fixedly on a single point as his right hand moved the mouse in all directions, clicking its buttons frantically.