The Ghosts of London

by Amy Cross

  "Let's be on the up-and-up here," Simeon says after a moment, turning to me. "Katie, you're a ghost. You're dead. You can't leave this place, and that's just a fact. It's gonna take you time to adjust, but you'll soon realize that being alone is worse than being dead, so you might as well start hanging out with the others. There's nothing worse than a ghost who wanders off and refuses to be sociable. Izzy here is gonna show you the ropes, and then after a few days I'm sure you'll work out how to fit right in, yeah?"

  "Fit in?" I ask, my mind racing as I try to work out another way to hurt him.

  "There are some very wealthy men in London," Izzy says, walking over and putting an arm around my shoulder. "Men who'll pay a lot of money for... Well, for anything that helps them to act out their darkest fantasies. Without going into too much detail, Katie, some of these fantasies are much better practiced on girls who are already dead. It takes some of the danger out of things, if you know what I mean, at least from our perspective. I mean, if a guy wants to try to throttle us, or beat us up a little, what does it matter? We're dead. There's no consequences, and that's what these guys are really paying for. They get to take things to extremes without worrying about having to deal with a corpse later on."

  I shake my head.

  "You'll get used to it," she continues. "I mean, fuck, you've literally got nothing else to be doing with your time now. What are you gonna do? Take up knitting? Join a club?" She puts a hand on my chest, directly over my quietened heart. "We get something out of it too, you know," she adds. "That anger and pain in your soul has to be released. It might sound fucked up right now, but trust me, once you get started with this new life, you'll wonder why you ever did anything differently. It's a real rush. You just need to open your mind to new possibilities." With that, she leans closer and kisses the side of my neck.

  "No," I mutter, pulling away from her.

  "Give her time," Simeon says with a smile. "You remember what you were like for the first few days, Izzy. You were kicking and screaming and shouting blue bloody murder, and then you took to just staring at me from the shadows. I damn near thought you were gonna fade away for a while."

  "I calmed down eventually," she replies, "and so will Katie."

  "Especially with you to help her," Simeon continues. "Don't worry, Katie. You're in safe hands. Izzy's got a good head on her shoulders, and I think she'll help you to come around pretty damn fast. Still, no pressure. It'll happen. It's really just a question of how long you fight it before you accept your new situation."

  "We're going to be friends," Izzy says. "Soon, Katie, you'll have pretty much forgotten that you were ever anywhere else. You can't ever leave the place where you died. Believe me, better and smarter ghosts than you have tried, but eventually they all have to accept the inevitable. This is your world now, so get used to it."

  Chapter Six

  Rachel

  "Come on," I mutter, standing in the middle of my flat as I wait for Katie to answer her phone. "Pick up, you always have your goddamn -"

  "Rachel," says a voice suddenly on the other end.

  I freeze as I realize who just answered my sister's phone.

  "Rachel, is that you?" my mother continues. "Please, this is important. Your sister's gone missing, and we haven't been able to get in touch with her for several days now. I know you probably don't want to talk to me, but have you heard from Katie?"

  I open my mouth to reply, but... It's been so long since I heard my mother's voice, and I wasn't remotely prepared for this to happen. Not today, of all days. There's so much I want to shout at the bitch, so many imagined conversations that I've run through time and time again when I'm trying to get to sleep, but now that I have the chance, no words leave my mouth. It's almost as if I'm a little girl again.

  "Rachel, please," she continues, sounding as if she's close to tears. "Your father's out, so you don't have to worry about him listening in. Can you please just talk to me for one minute and tell me if you've heard anything from your sister?" There's a moment's silence as she waits for me to answer. "Rachel, for God's sake, I know it's you, so just say something! This is childish and ridiculous! We need to know where your sister is, so even if you don't have a civil word for us, you could at least care enough about Katie to answer our questions!"

  "I..." Pausing, I try to work out what I can tell her. Words fail me, however, as I realize that I don't have anything to say to this woman. After everything that happened, and after all the horrors she allowed to continue under our roof when we were children, I feel as if I don't owe her a damn word of explanation.

  "Give me that," says another voice, male this time. "Rachel, this is your father. Your mother might be prepared to put up with this silliness, but I need to know -"

  Before he can say another word, I drop the phone and step back. I take a deep breath, but I can still hear his voice coming from the speaker, so I give it a good kick and send it flying into the wall, which finally makes it fall apart. Taking a deep breath, I try not to let a sense of panic fill my body, but it's difficult: I've carefully avoided having any contact with my parents for a few years now, and I was very much hoping that I'd be able to go the rest of my life without having to hear their voices again.

  Sitting down for a moment, I feel tears start to stream down my face. It was bad enough hearing my mother's voice, but then when my father came on the line... I pull one of my sleeves up and look at the faint white lines running along my arms and around my wrists, and for a moment I feel tempted to start cutting myself again. Focusing on the fact that my parents are several hundred miles north, however, I finally managed to calm down and the urge to hurt myself starts to fade; instead, I want to travel up there, knock on their door, and make them see what I've become.

  After all, it's their fault. Both of them, equally.

  Grabbing my laptop, I open a browser window and bring up my email. As I search through the deluge of spam messages I've received over the past few days, I suddenly spot one from Katie. Opening it up, I see that she arrived in London a few nights ago and she's been trying to get in touch with me. She went to my old address, but of course there was no sign of me, and when I go back to my inbox, I see that she sent me another message not too long ago, claiming to be at some house in the East End with a guy named Simeon. Once again, the message begs me to get in touch, and this time there's a new hint of desperation in her words, as if she's starting to doubt that she'll ever hear from me.

  I freeze.

  The thought of my sister being alone in London is horrific. Katie's smart, but she's not exactly someone who's got much experience of the world, and I can only imagine what this Simeon guy must want from her. I quickly tap out a reply, telling her to let me know exactly where she is, and then I hit the Send button and wait. I check a few social network sites, hoping that I might be able to track her down that way, but as my trembling fingers punch at the keys I start to think of all the terrible things that could have happened to her. After a couple of minutes, I realize that there's no way she's going to get back to me quickly, so I close the laptop and try to work out what the hell to do next.

  She's out there.

  Alone.

  With some guy she barely even knows.

  Simeon.

  I feel as if I should recognize that name from somewhere...

  I should have known that something like this would happen. When I left home a few years ago, I promised to go back and fetch Katie once I'd established myself. Although I kept telling her to wait a little longer, I should have realized that eventually she'd become impatient and decide to strike out on her own. If anything happens to her, it's going to be my fault, and I'll never forgive myself. I swore to look after her and keep her safe, and now she's alone in the city.

  Suddenly, that feeling of sorrow in the pit of my stomach is starting to make a whole lot more sense.

  Chapter Seven

  Katie

  I watch as the woman makes her way across the landing. There's a calm, al
most spiritual look in her eyes, as if she doesn't care about anything in the world. Finally, however, she reaches a door and pauses before turning and staring straight at me with dead, soulless eyes.

  "You're dead, right?" I say after a moment.

  She doesn't reply. After continuing to stare at me for a few seconds, she simply turns away, opens the door, and heads into one of the other rooms.

  "Okay," Izzy says, watching me from halfway up the stairs, "I admit, they're not always the greatest conversationalists." She pauses. "We'll be the same, one day."

  "We?" I ask. I'm really not in the mood to talk to her, but I figure I need to know more about what's happening.

  "Our minds will fade, just like theirs," she continues, coming up to join me on the landing and then sitting next to me on the hard, bare floor. "Don't ask me how it works, but over time - I mean, over decades or maybe even a century or two - they seem to lose most of their personality. That's why Simeon needs to acquire new girls every now and then, 'cause some of the clients prefer a girl who can actually hold a fucking conversation. All the old ghosts here are left over from the factory days, but they're finally getting to the point where they're not much use."

  "How long will it take?" I ask.

  "For your mind to fade away?" She pauses. "I don't know, exactly. I've been dead for fifteen years, and occasionally I think I can feel myself becoming a little less vivid, if you know what I mean. I keep an eye on the others, and I'm pretty sure that once a century has gone by -"

  "A century?" I reply, shocked by the thought of such a long period of time. "I can't spend a century like this. I want it to happen now. I want to forget everything and just become a mindless zombie like the others. I can't just float around here like you, I'm not..." I pause as I realize how insane this whole situation has become. I feel as if, at any moment, my head is going to implode. "There's been a mistake," I add, checking my pulse for the hundredth time. "I'm alive. I have to be!"

  "Stop doing that," she snaps, pulling my hand away from the side of my neck. "It's a compulsive thing. You need to cut it out."

  "I can't be dead!" I hiss, getting free from her grasp and checking the other side of my neck. I'm convinced that somehow, I've been doing this all wrong and any moment now I'll feel the familiar beat of my heart.

  "Anything?" Izzy asks with a sad smile.

  "If you can't be useful," I reply, checking my wrists, "then just leave me alone."

  "I did exactly the same thing at first," she continues. "I never realized how important my heartbeat was until suddenly it was gone. I'd give anything to feel it one more time. Sometimes, I still check, late at night when no-one's around to laugh at me. I don't know why, 'cause I know there's no way it's ever going to start up again. My heart's just this cold, still organ in my chest now, but if it'd beat one more time..."

  I take a deep breath, which is entirely unnecessary but which makes me feel a little better.

  "He cut my throat," she says after a moment.

  "Who?" I ask.

  "Who do you think?" She pauses. "I was like you. Well, I wasn't as naive as you, but I still let him sweet-talk me into coming here one night. I'd been in the city for a couple of weeks, sleeping rough just off Trafalgar Square of all places, and I was starting to get sick. A few guys had offered me drugs, and I turned them down. I thought I was so fucking smart. And then, just as I was getting really fucking desperate, I bumped into Simeon. He said he'd help me out, and even though I knew he was up to something, my feet were freezing and my clothes were wet and I allowed myself to believe him. I mean, he wasn't trying to get me hooked on anything, and he wasn't shoving his hand up my skirt every five minutes, so I ignored my fears. It's amazing how even smart people can make dumb decisions when they're scared."

  "And then..." I pause for a moment. "He brought you back here?"

  "The same way he did to you. Don't beat yourself up too bad, Katie. Sure, you were a little naive, but you were desperate to find someone who'd help you. When we're desperate, we tend to override our better judgment."

  "When you say he cut your throat," I reply, "what exactly do you mean?"

  "Duh," she replies with a forced smile, "isn't it obvious?" She runs a finger from one ear to the other. "It was on the second night. He was chatting shit and then he came up behind me and the next thing I felt was a fucking big blade slicing through me, and all the blood flowing out. Later, he told me he wasn't going to use that method again 'cause he'd had to clean up such a big mess." She pauses again, as if the memory is painful. "I remember floundering on the floor, gasping for breath like a fucking fish on land. All the while, I was bleeding out. It felt like it lasted forever, but it was probably only a minute or so. And then I woke up later, and the rest is history."

  "He murdered you," I reply, shocked by how calm she seems. "Simeon murdered you, and now you're helping him?"

  She shrugs.

  "He murdered you!" I say again.

  "It takes about a week for the edge to go," she replies. "That's when the anger seems to fade and you start to accept your situation."

  "And you let him do the same thing to me?"

  "What else is there to do?" she asks. "I just hope my mind continues to fade. Things would be a lot easier if I was just like the rest of 'em, but they've got a head-start over me. Well, over both of us." We both turn to look across the landing as another of the ghosts emerges from a room and walks quietly past us, ignoring us completely. "They look like they're at peace, don't they?" Izzy continues. "They can still perform for the customers, and I don't think they ever cry or think about getting away. I just hope that one day I'll be like them."

  "And what if I refuse?" I reply, shuddering at the thought of being confined to this banal, lifeless hell forever.

  "Then he'll burn you," she says with a half-smile.

  "Burn me?"

  "Simeon can send us somewhere we really don't want to be," she continues. "Believe it or not, this place isn't the worst outcome. He showed me, once, where we could end up if we didn't cooperate. I didn't like the look of it very much, and I'd rather have eternal boredom than eternal pain, wouldn't you?" Hearing someone banging on the door downstairs, she gets to her feet. "I think that's my next client," she says, glancing down at me for a moment. "Don't worry, Katie. You'll get the hang of this soon. You never have to worry about being hungry or thirsty or cold or tired again. All those dull little fears are gone forever. All you need to do now is focus on your new level of existence and find a way to make it work for you."

  As she heads downstairs to greet her client, I stay where I am, staring at one of the nearby doors. I can hear a girl and her client having sex in there, but the thought of spending any more time in this place is too sickening to contemplate. I don't know how, but I have to get out of here. I'm not like these other people; they're dead, whereas I... I still have a chance. There has to be some way of getting out of this house and then finding help from somewhere.

  Reaching up to my neck, I search once again for my pulse, but of course I don't find it. How could I? My heart stopped, and there's no way to get it restarted. Closing my eyes as tears start to stream down my face, I realize that I can feel my cold, dead heart resting in my chest, as if it'll never beat again. It's not a heavy weight, but it's in there, dead like me.

  Chapter Eight

  Rachel

  Hurrying along the street, I realize that it's getting harder and harder not to panic. No matter how much I try to stay calm, I can't stop imagining some lecherous guy running his hands all over my sister's body; at best, he's probably some kind of opportunist arsehole who wants a little rough fun, but at worst he could be planning to hurt her or even kill her. I've been in London long enough to know that there are some disgusting, cruel people lurking in the shadows, and that a girl like Katie might be enough to lure a few creeps out into the open. As I cross the busy road, I try not to -

  "Jesus!" a voice shouts.

  Turning, I see a car screeching to a halt rig
ht in front of me, finally stopping just a few inches away with a startled-looking man staring at me through the windshield.

  "What the fuck are you doing?" shouts a guy watching from the other side of the road.

  "I'm sorry," I mutter as the driver of the car gets out and starts shouting at me. Hurrying away, I make my way quickly through the crowd. I guess it wouldn't really have mattered if the car had hit me anyway; if I'd died, I probably would have just woken up a few minutes later. Still, that's not the kind of thing that I want to have happen in public, and right now I don't have any time to spare. I need to work out where the hell Katie has gone, and that's why I've come over to Spitalfields in the hope of maybe finding someone who's heard of this guy named Simeon. It's a needle in a haystack, but right now it's all I've got.

  Realizing that I should probably check my mail again, I hurry into an internet cafe and put some coins into the slot. Once I've seen that there's no reply, I race back out into the street again, trying to ignore the dark, grumbling sensation in my belly. At this rate, I think I'm in danger of collapsing, but somewhere in the city my sister needs me, and if I don't find her soon, I might be too late.

  "Simeon!" I blurt out as I run into the small vinyl shop run by a guy I used to know. "Tell me about anyone you know named Simeon!"

  Standing behind the counter, Dave looks shocked to see me.

  "Do you know anyone named Simeon?" I ask. "Have you heard of anyone?"

  "Do you mean a band, or a singer, or..."

  "A person," I continue. "A guy. I think he might live somewhere in this part of the city."

  "It's been a while since you were round these parts," he replies with a frown. "Are you sure -"