The Ghosts of London

by Amy Cross

  Nothing.

  "Cute," Izzy mutters, nudging my leg with her foot, "but seriously, we don't have time for all this bullshit. Let's just get up and at 'em, yeah?"

  I check the other side of my neck, but there's still nothing. I sit in silence for a moment, feeling the stillness that has taken over my body. No heart beating, no blood pumping... after a moment, I realize that I'm not even breathing.

  "You're dead," Izzy says. "There's no point looking for a heartbeat or anything like that. You're way beyond all that shit. Right now, your heart's just this useless little sack of crap hanging in your chest. Sure, it was important before, but now it's just sitting there doing nothing. Less than nothing, really. It's taking up space and it's adding weight, but I guess it's worth hanging onto for sentimental reasons." She stares at me, as if she's expecting me to say something.

  I stare straight ahead, waiting to breathe.

  "Look," she continues, "I need to guide you through a few things, so how about you get up off the bathroom floor and at least come through to the other room, yeah? Let's talk about this."

  I try again to take a deep breath, but the effort immediately produces a retching sensation in the back of my throat. Leaning forward, I spew foul brown water onto the bathroom floor.

  "Nice," Izzy says, taking a step back. "Someone's gonna have to clean that up, you know, but... Fuck it, I'll do it later, okay? As a favor to you. Don't let anyone ever say that I'm not nice."

  I bring up some more water, and finally I pause on all fours, waiting to see if there's any more.

  "Jesus, you're worse than I was," Izzy continues, before leaning down and clicking her fingers in front of my face. "Katie. Babe. I realize that is a lot of shit to get your head around, but you're not gonna make much progress down there on the floor, are you? Why not get up and come with me to the bedroom, and I'll help you get your head around it all. Everyone needs a bit of help. This is a difficult time."

  Slowly, I grip the side of the bathtub and haul myself up onto my feet. I feel strangely numb, as if there's this great roiling anger somewhere in my body but it can't get out.

  "That's better," Izzy says, putting her hands on my shoulders. "Jesus, you're still a little warm. Anyway, I know this is gonna sound a bit weird, but I think you and me, we can be good friends. I've got a lot of stuff to teach you, and I'm sure you're kinda fun to be around. I admit we got off on the wrong foot, and you might have certain negative feelings about me in light of stuff that's happened, but if you can get over all of that crap and focus on the positives, I think we can be tight."

  I stare at her.

  She grins at me and gives me a gentle shake.

  "Come on, Katie. You're gonna thank me when you realize how much better things are now, and I swear to God, we're both in a better position if we stick together. Between the two of us, Simeon can be a bit of a cock sometimes, so I could use someone in my corner."

  I look down at my chest and realize that I'm still not breathing. Taking a deep breath, I feel a tingle pass through my body, but the breath feels as if it's completely irrelevant.

  "Hey," Izzy says, reaching up and brushing a hand against the side of my face.

  I take a step back, repulsed by her touch.

  "You know," she continues, with a hint of sadness in her voice, "I don't have any friends here. The other girls were all in place before I arrived, and there's some kind of cultural barrier that means they don't want nothing to do with me. I think it's 'cause they all died in, like, the nineteen-hundreds or something, back when this place was a factory, so they're all totally snooty and up themselves. The truth is, I've kinda been waiting for someone more my own age to show up and stick around." She pauses. "So how about it? Do you reckon we can put our difficult start behind us and maybe see if we can hang out?"

  "You..." I pause as I try to find a way to release my anger. "You killed me," I whisper eventually.

  "You're still here, aren't you?"

  I reach down and put two fingers against my wrist, but once again there's no pulse.

  "You'll get used to that," she adds.

  "You killed me," I continue, turning to look down into the bathtub. "You and Simeon. You drowned me." I turn back to her. "You murdered me."

  "What did you expect?" she replies. "Jesus, Katie, think about it. You met a random guy in the street. He could see you were homeless and he gave you his number, and you called him up and let him take you home back to some sketchy place that's blatantly some kind of squat. I mean, fuck, how naive can someone be? Is that really how you think the fucking world works?"

  "I thought he wanted to help me," I tell her, even though I'm aware that I must sound like a complete idiot.

  "No-one helps no-one for nothing," she says sadly. "You really shouldn't have trusted him, but I guess it's too late to do anything about it now. Still, you've got to look at the positives. You're dead, but you're not gone. You can still think, you can still feel, you can still touch stuff and talk to people and all that jazz. There's some downsides, but, hell, there was some downsides with being alive too, yeah? It's swings and roundabouts, Katie. What you lose in one area, you make up in another. Being dead is really all about seeing different things in different ways. There's advantages and disadvantages, but it's not, like, basically better or worse than being alive. It's just different."

  Staring at her, I feel my anger starting to boil over, but after a few seconds I realize that it's not directed at her at all. I'm angry at myself, for being so unbelievably stupid and naive that I allowed this to happen. Hell, I even stole a blunt, round-tipped little knife from a cafe because I thought I could use it to defend myself. I must be the biggest idiot in the world.

  "Come on," Katie says, reaching out and grabbing my arm. "Please, Katie. It's a bit shit just standing in the bathroom."

  As she pulls me toward the door, I give in and decide to follow her. Every step feels strange, as if the lack of a heartbeat makes my body move differently, but all I can think about is the fact that I managed to survive two and a half days in London and now I'm dead.

  Two and a half days.

  That's all.

  I mean, I always knew I wasn't the most world-weary person in the world, but I thought I could come to London and not end up like this. Instead, I blindly followed Simeon, I ignored the doubts in the back of my mind, and I didn't realize until it was too late that I was being dragged into something horrific.

  And now I'm dead.

  Chapter Four

  Rachel

  "Robinson," he says as he tries to wipe smeared mud off his suit. "That's enough of a name, don't you think? I don't know why everyone insists on having two. John Smith. Bob Smith. It's wasteful. Just one name is enough, provided you can back it up, don't you think?"

  We're standing at the edge of the gantry. After spending a few minutes wading around on the riverbed, this Robinson guy shouted up to me and told me to wrap the rope around part of the fence and then hold tight. I did as he asked, and then he slowly started to pull himself up until, finally, he climbed back over the edge with a skull in his hand. There's something very matter-of-fact about the guy, as if he thinks that there's nothing remotely unusual about this entire situation, but I can't help glancing over my shoulder ever few minutes to check if Alexander is anywhere to be seen.

  "So what's your name?" Robinson asks after a moment, as he starts trying to clean mud off the skull.

  "Rachel," I reply.

  "Rachel the half-dead woman," he continues, before pulling a handkerchief from his pocket and running it in through one of the skull's eyes and then back out the other. Finally, he takes a moment to floss some of the mud out of the sockets. "So how did you pull it off then, huh? This half-dead, half-alive thing? It's quite a neat trick."

  "I don't..." Pausing, I try to decide whether I can trust this guy. He certainly seems to have made some pretty big assumptions about me, and he already knows more about my situation than almost anyone else. At the same time, he's so
direct and open with his strangeness, I get the feeling that he's being totally honest and that, as such, he's not hiding anything or playing games.

  "You don't know?" he asks, carefully removing the jaw from the skull. "That's okay. I completely understand. I really would like to get a better idea later, though. Once this whole mess with the river has been sorted out, when would be amenable to a trip across town one afternoon? It won't hurt too much, but I have some electrodes I'd like to place directly into your brain. I think the results could be astounding."

  "I'm not sure about that," I reply. "I think maybe -"

  "Think it over," he continues. "They're very thin, no more than half a millimeter in diameter. Granted, you'll definitely feel them, but I can give you an anesthetic. Or alcohol. Or both. It's all in the name of science, you see." He reattaches the jawbone and then holds the skull up to admire it, and finally he turns it so that the hollow face is staring straight at me. "Who do you think this was?" he asks.

  "I have no idea," I reply.

  "Neither do I," he continues, "but I intend to find out. I mean, it must have been someone, right? Someone's son or daughter, perhaps someone's brother or sister, maybe even lover. It looks to be adult, and there's no obvious sign of injury. There are these." He points at one of the eye sockets. "Tiny structural problems. Little cracks. I could be wrong, but I think this poor soul drowned. The jawbone was dislocated on one side too, so he or she was screaming at the end. The skull seems to be no more than maybe seventy or eight years old, so I guess that narrows things down a little." He pauses. "Someone screaming so loudly, in the heart of London, that they dislocated their jaw. It's hard to believe, isn't it?"

  "I guess," I reply.

  "No," he adds. "It's not hard to believe at all. That's just where you're wrong. It's very easy to believe. Why did you agree with such a ridiculous suggestion? Whoever this was, they ended up being dropped into the river. The moment they sank beneath the waves, they were gone forever. That was the idea, anyway. If it wasn't for this rather random and unfortunate incident with the dam, this body would never have been found, and neither would all the others." He pauses, before looking straight at me again. "Ah," he says with a frown. "I get it now."

  "Get what?" I ask.

  He seems lost in thought for a moment. "Never mind," he continues, setting the skull down on the ground. "I'll have to take it back to the lab to get it analyzed. I can't do the same for every skull along the riverbed, of course. I mean, Christ, can you imagine how long that'd take? Two and a half years of London murders all suddenly showing up at once. Most of the killers are probably long gone as well, so it's not like there are any scores to be settled, not in this realm at least. In fact, some of the killers probably ended up down there with their victims eventually. Still..." He turns and looks toward the main offices that run along one end of the gantry. "Someone caused all of this to happen," he mutters, "and they must have had a motive."

  "You think the dam was sabotaged?" I ask.

  "I think it has to be a possibility. The people who designed and built this thing weren't idiots, and I've seen the reports they're getting from their analysis of the damage. There's no way that this should have happened, and yet here we are, staring above a dry river. It's almost impossible to believe that it could have happened without some kind of intervention."

  "By who?"

  "Exactly." He pauses again. "You arrived with Mr. Medion, didn't you?" he continues, turning back to me.

  "Does that matter?" I ask.

  "Not at all," he replies. "It just means I don't need to ask for your phone number or anything like that. I shouldn't have any trouble tracking you down when the time comes. For now, I think I've got everything I need from this place, so I think I'll take Mr. Bones here and get going." Picking up the skull, he reaches out to shake my hand. "It was nice meeting you, Rachel."

  I shake his hand, although I immediately regret it as I get mud smeared on my fingers.

  "Whoops," he says with a faint smile. "Hope it doesn't burn."

  As I watch him carry the skull away, I try to work out how he could possibly have guessed so much about me. After a moment, however, I'm distracted by a faint tingling and burning sensation between my fingers, right where the mud touched my skin. I hurry over to a nearby portable toilet and head inside, and for the next few minutes I frantically wash my hands. The burning sensation stops pretty quickly, but I don't feel as if I'm clean yet. It's been almost a day since I had a chance to wash my hands properly, so I pour a huge blob of soap into my palm and get to work scrubbing as hard as I can, determined to get every atom of dirt away.

  Twenty minutes later, I'm still going. In fact, I don't think I'll ever feel clean again. Just as I'm about to put some more soap on my hands, however, I feel a twinge in my chest. I'm still feeling as if somewhere, something awful has happened, and for some reason I can't shake the sensation that someone close to me is in trouble.

  Chapter Five

  Katie

  "Go on," Izzy says. "Try it."

  We're standing at the front door, which Katie has opened to reveal the alleyway outside. She seems to be trying to prove some kind of point, and I feel almost like she's treating me as if I'm a child.

  "Go on," she continues with a smile. "Just try to reach your hand out the door."

  Feeling as if I don't have the will to argue with her right now, I raise my left hand and try to hold it outside; before I can get very far, however, I feel some kind of immense pressure pushing back at me, and I realize that there's no way I can get out this way. I try again, but the same thing happens.

  "You died in this house," she says, pushing the door shut, "and you're gonna have to stay in this house. That's how it works now. Don't ask me the exact details, like atoms and shit like that, but it's just how things are, okay? Believe me, I spent a few days trying to find a way out myself, but it's just not possible. Like I told you earlier, there are advantages and disadvantages to being dead, and this is definitely one of the disadvantages. You're stuck here, and you ain't going nowhere. You understand?"

  I turn to her.

  "Fucking hell," she mutters, "you're a ghost, Katie, not a zombie, so why not at least say something?"

  I pause for a moment, before opening the door and trying to walk out. The pressure immediately pushes back against me, and after a few more tries I realize that it's hopeless. It's as if something out there is refusing to let me pass, and although my initial instinct is to keep trying, I can tell that there's no way I'll ever be able to make it.

  "See?" Izzy says, pushing the door shut again. "Now, you've got two choices. You can stand here and do what I did, which means spending a couple of days railing against the inevitable until you finally come to your senses. Or, you can take some well-intentioned advice and accept that for better or for worse, you're stuck here now. I know it's not exactly a fucking palace, but the building's got some charm, and who knows? Maybe one day we'll get lucky and someone'll knock it down and build something more interesting on the site. If the area gets gentrified, we might end up haunting an art gallery or a trendy wine bar."

  "No fucking chance," says a familiar voice.

  Turning, I see that Simeon is standing nearby, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets.

  "I trust Izzy's giving you the lowdown, yeah?" he continues. "Lot to take in and all that, but she's a good girl, she'll talk you through it and see that you're alright. You could do a lot worse than having her as a guide."

  The sight of his grinning face immediately makes something change in my chest. All the anger that has been building up suddenly seems to be given a way out, and although I try to restrain myself, I finally realize that there's one thing that right now could actually make me feel a little better.

  "Katie -" he starts to say.

  Before I can stop myself, I run at him and knock him to the ground. Climbing onto his chest, I reach down and put my hands around his neck while he stares up at me with a startled, thoug
h slightly amused, expression. I try to squeeze his neck as tightly as possible, but I can already tell that I'm not strong enough; still, the anger is fueling me and I change my grip slightly before trying to crush his windpipe. Closing my eyes, I try to focus every scrap of energy on the task of ending his miserable life, but soon he starts laughing and after a few more seconds he pushes me off and gets back to his feet, dusting himself down in the process.

  "Jesus," Izzy says from the other side of the hallway, "maybe you two should get a room."

  "No," Simeon says, sounding a little breathless as he stares down at me. "It's all good. She's got some spunk. I like it." He reaches a hand out, as if to help me up. "No hard feelings, Katie. I understand that you're pissed off. Anyone would be, but the edge'll fade soon enough."

  Ignoring his hand, I get to my feet.

  "If it makes you feel better," he continues, "you're the first one who's tried that. Izzy just stared at me for about a week solid before she came around to my way of thinking." He taps the side of his neck. "Don't feel bad," he adds. "I work out. It'd take a tough bastard to bring me down, but I genuinely admire your approach."

  "Simeon's not dead," Izzy says after a moment. "Not physically, anyway. He's dead inside, though. Like, he's a cold-hearted bastard who doesn't give a fuck about anything apart from money."

  "Now that's not quite true," he replies with a smile. "I also care about the cool stuff that money can buy."

  Trying to work out exactly what's happening here, I stare at Simeon for a moment. He seems confident and cocky, as if he thinks that he's got the whole situation under control. I swear to God, I was ready to kill him just now, but I just couldn't manage to summon the strength. I don't know whether I'm weak because I'm dead, or whether I've just always been too weak to do something like that, but I feel like a complete idiot. Still, the urge to hurt him, to make him suffer for what he did to me, is still strong, and somehow I'm going to find a way to wipe that grin off his face.