The Secrets of Ghosts

by Sarah Painter

  ‘But you can’t stay inside me for ever,’ Katie said, horrified. ‘You’ll be back to square one afterwards.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I think you can hold me and another soul inside at the same time. We’ll become linked because we’ll occupy the same dimensional space. You.’ He smiled. ‘Temporarily, of course.’

  ‘And then you’ll, what, step out of me again?’

  ‘Naturally. If we do it at the same time, then I’m hoping we’ll still be linked.’

  ‘Will that work?’

  ‘I have no idea, but I think it’s well worth a try.’

  ‘And you swear you’ll leave me again?’ Katie couldn’t believe she was considering it. The idea was abhorrent. Awful.

  ‘It would just be for a moment,’ Henry said. ‘Then I’ll never trouble you again.’

  Katie felt a stab of guilt. ‘You’re not troubling me,’ she said. ‘I really do think of you as a friend, you know.’

  ‘That’s kind,’ Henry said. ‘But I must face facts. You’ll leave this place, your life will take you onwards, and then I’ll be alone again.’

  ‘I could take you with me. If I could work out what you’re anchored to, I could maybe move it, give you more freedom.’

  ‘But you’ll grow old and die and I’ll still be me. Same age. Same Henry. Still alone. Besides…’ He hesitated. ‘Now I know that Violet’s here I won’t rest until I see her again.’

  Katie swallowed. ‘You know about Violet?’

  ‘I heard you talking to your friend.’ Henry wagged a finger. ‘You should’ve told me. Naughty girl.’

  ‘I was going to,’ Katie said, wondering what the hell Violet saw in Henry. He was unbelievably arrogant. ‘I was waiting for the right moment.’

  Henry spread his hands. ‘I believe we’ve found it. You give me what I want and I’ll help you control your awkward little psychic gift. I’ll make sure you’re never troubled again.’ He was moving towards her and Katie took a step back. ‘Imagine the peace and quiet.’

  ‘Let me think about it.’

  ‘Of course.’ Henry gave a small smile. ‘I’ve got all the time in the world.’

  Chapter 26

  Max came back with a box of paracetamol and a pint glass of cold water. Katie swallowed two tablets and half the water.

  ‘Do you believe me, now?’ Max said. ‘You need a break from this place. I’m going to take you home and you’re going to have a good night’s sleep and then tomorrow we’re going somewhere. Anywhere. How about the Lake District? Or Cornwall? Ireland?’

  ‘You’re taking me on a mini break.’

  Max managed a tense little smile. ‘It’s for your own good.’

  ‘You said you’d help,’ Violet said. She floated towards Katie, her eyes wide, arms outstretched, looking more ghoul-like than she ever had before.

  ‘I know,’ Katie said. ‘And I will. I just need a bit of time.’

  ‘Is she here now?’ Max was squinting in Violet’s direction. ‘You see. They don’t leave you alone for a moment.’

  ‘I’m not bothering Katie,’ Violet said, indignant.

  ‘Hang on,’ Max said. He squinted in Violet’s direction. ‘I think I can see something. It’s like heat haze. The air is kind of shimmering.’

  Katie looked at Violet. She could smell burned matches and an undertone of Chanel No.5. The light was catching off the stones in Violet’s headband and her dress moved as if blown by a draught. She reached out and touched Violet’s fingertips. There was a crackle of energy, like an electrical current jumping from Katie to Violet, and she snatched her hand away.

  ‘Christ.’ Max stumbled backwards. ‘I saw her.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ Katie said. She was rubbing her fingers. They felt hot, almost singed.

  ‘I just saw a ghost,’ Max said. ‘A real ghost. Fucking fuck.’

  ‘Is he talking about me?’ Violet said. ‘His language is appalling.’

  The scent of cigar smoke gave Henry away a few seconds before he appeared. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Chatting to Violet. I think I’m making her stronger.’ Katie felt as if something very important had happened but it was hard to concentrate with Henry and Violet and Max all near her.

  ‘She’s here?’ The sudden need in his face was heartbreaking. ‘Tell her I love her.’

  ‘Henry’s here,’ Katie said to Violet. ‘He says he loves you.’

  Violet clasped her hands to her chest and smiled, tears shining in her eyes. ‘Tell him I love him for ever.’

  ‘Right-oh,’ Katie said, but Max had hold of her arm, pulling her close. He put both hands on her cheeks and made her look at him. He was pale, his lips thin. ‘I just saw a ghost.’

  ‘Violet. Yes.’

  ‘Did you tell him, yet?’ Violet said, her voice close.

  ‘Just a sec,’ Katie said. Looking into Max’s eyes, she said, ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I will be.’ He let his hands drop as if suddenly realising that he’d been touching Katie. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay. It’s a shock.’ She couldn’t help adding. ‘I did tell you.’

  ‘I know. And I believed you. I thought I believed you. I just—’ He stopped. ‘It’s a shock.’

  ‘What’s more interesting is why did me touching Violet make her solid enough for you to see?’

  ‘I think we should go to the pub,’ Max said. ‘Right now.’

  ‘Okay,’ Katie said. ‘If that’s what you feel like doing...’ Honestly, show a man evidence of the afterlife and all he wanted to do was go and play pool and drink beer. She really didn’t know anything about the opposite sex.

  Max practically carried her out of the hotel, he was so desperate to get out. Once they were in Katie’s car and almost at the centre of Pendleford, he said, ‘Shall I show you the museum?’

  ‘I thought you wanted to go to the pub?’

  ‘That was just the first thing that came into my head. There were ghosts around. I wasn’t thinking straight.’ He looked at her. ‘Why are you so calm?’

  ‘I’ve had time to get used to it.’ And I’m not that calm.

  ‘That’s not it,’ Max said, staring at her with eyebrows raised. ‘Back in the beginning, when that table was flying around the bar—’ He stopped. ‘Was that real, then? Christ.’

  Katie concentrated on parking the car. It was strange to be described as calm. She always felt such an insecure mess inside.

  ‘How are you not freaking out?’

  Katie applied the handbrake and turned to face Max. ‘You know I told you that my family has certain abilities? It’s more than that, really. It’s like having a totally different way of seeing the world. Once you know that magic exists, that people can be cursed or cured with words, it colours everything. You can’t help seeing magic in everything around you.’

  ‘That’s just like conning,’ Max said. He held up a hand to stop Katie interrupting. ‘Not that I’m saying your stuff is dishonest — it’s just that when you’ve been brought up to grift, you see it everywhere. It changes the way you see things. Situations. People. Everything.’

  Katie nodded. ‘You can’t switch it off. If there’s a plane crash on the news, I wonder if the pilot was hexed—’

  ‘And if I see a total bastard waving wads of cash around, I get an itch to relieve him of it.’ He looked at her carefully. ‘Did you just say “magic”?’

  ‘What else do you call the ability to find lost things, to know what a person needs, to tell fortunes, to stop an argument with some herbs, to—?’

  He reached out and cupped her cheek. ‘Magic and ghosts. Okay.’

  ‘Okay?’ Katie said. ‘Just like that?’

  He leaned across and kissed her quickly. ‘Just like that.’

  Katie grabbed the front of his T-shirt and hauled him back for a proper kiss. She was definitely getting better at it. She was able to shut her mind off for whole seconds at a time. She opened her eyes and watched his eyelids and eyelashes close up, the pores of hi
s skin, felt the slight scrape of his stubble on her cheek.

  Max pulled away. ‘I lost you again, didn’t I?’

  ‘No,’ Katie lied.

  ‘You think too much,’ he said and got out of the car.

  ‘That’s impossible,’ Katie said, following him.

  The museum was just as tiny as Max described. It occupied the bottom floor of a small Tudor house, up a narrow cobbled street. The house was packed in by cottages on either side, which almost seemed to be holding up its sagging walls. The half-timbered façade was bowing outwards, and the roof looked as if it was going to come down at any moment. There was a small printed card in the bottom pane of one of the small windows. It had faded in the sun, but up close Katie could read the words ‘Pendleford Folk Museum. Open Daily. Ring Bell’.

  The woman who answered the door wasn’t as old as Max had described. Maybe only in her eighties or nineties. She had white hair and was dressed in moss-green tweed. She led them to a surprisingly bright and modern-looking exhibition and then shuffled off in what appeared to be tweed slippers.

  Katie scanned the printed boards, skimming over the history of Pendleford as a Roman settlement, through Saxon times, to its prosperous seventeenth-century years as part of the textile industry. She was caught by an image of a weaver’s cottage, realising that it was familiar to her as the crystal shop on Silver Street.

  ‘Over here.’ Max pointed to a board dedicated to the Beaufort family. It described the history of the Beaufort estate, rehashing the information Katie had already cribbed from the Internet. Next to it was a glass-fronted cabinet with the letters Max had photographed. The display read, ‘The mysterious disappearance of an heiress’.

  Violet Beaufort was an enigma even before her mysterious disappearance in 1937. A socialite heiress with a penchant for archaeology, she is known to have taken a great personal interest in the Neolithic excavations at nearby Avebury and Windmill Hill.

  When she first went missing, it was widely assumed that she had eloped with Alexander James, a wealthy Yorkshire businessman who was conducting the archaeological digs, some of the first of their kind in Britain. Love letters (fig. 1-5) from Alexander seem to bear this out, although the couple must have left Britain as there are no recorded sightings of either one after July, 1937.

  Some locals still believe that something more sinister occurred and that a police investigation was hushed up and, perhaps, even cut short, by Lord Beaufort, who was mindful of the family’s reputation and wished to avoid further scandal.

  ‘Have you asked yourself why there aren’t any letters from Violet?’

  Katie looked at Max. ‘She didn’t love Alexander, she loved Henry. She told me—’

  ‘Okay,’ Max said, ‘but why aren’t there letters between her and Henry? Why isn’t Henry mentioned in any of the news stories?’

  Katie shrugged. ‘Violet’s affair with Henry was secret. They just did a good job of keeping it that way.’

  ‘But she must’ve been murdered. Don’t you think it would’ve come out during the investigation?’

  ‘Don’t say that. Maybe she eloped with Henry. Maybe she can’t tell me how she died because she really can’t remember. Maybe she lived a long and happy life in America and died in her sleep aged eighty and the Violet I know is just an echo of her younger self or something. Why does it have to be murder?’

  ‘Hey, I’m not the bad guy. I’m just pointing out the most likely scenario.’

  ‘Well, don’t.’ Katie knew she was being ridiculous but she liked Violet. She knew she had to work out what happened to her, but at the same time she simply didn’t want to know.

  ‘I just don’t see why you’re so quick to trust them.’

  Katie’s hand flew to her necklace. ‘I’m not.’

  Max was clearly frustrated, but Katie couldn’t come up with an answer that would make him happy. Unless she lied.

  ‘I’m out of options,’ she said.

  ‘What makes you think you can trust Henry?’

  ‘We’ve been over this,’ Katie said. Her head was pounding again and she wanted to lie on the sofa in the quiet of the library, not argue with Max.

  ‘And you’re still not listening. These things are dead. They are echoes or spirits or whatever, but they’re not even people any more.’

  ‘They’re inside my head,’ Katie said. ‘It’s like the top layers of my skin have been peeled back and I’m feeling everything all the time. I can’t go on. I’m tired. I’m so bloody tired.’

  ‘I know.’ Max reached for her. ‘I know. I’m sorry. I wish I could do something. Can I do something?’ He looked so sweet and earnest and Katie leaned against him, feeling a rush of gratitude that he was there. She couldn’t believe she used to think he looked predatory. He was always watching, always calculating, but he had been trained that way. It wasn’t his fault.

  ‘Please, hold off,’ he said, speaking into the top of her head. ‘Just give us a bit more time to research this stuff. Talk to that woman, Hannah, again. Talk it through with Gwen.’

  ‘Okay,’ Katie said. ‘Another few days won’t do any harm. Violet’s waited this long But, then, I’m going to do it. I’m going to link Henry and Violet. I’m not doing it for him, I’m not even doing it so he’ll help me-

  Max tightened his arms around her. ‘He’s promised you?’

  ‘He says he can help me control the sight or whatever we’re going to call it.’

  ‘Ghost whispering,’ Max said

  Katie smiled into the soft fabric of his t-shirt. ‘If you like. But this is for Violet. She’s had such a crap deal and I can give her this. It’s not much, I mean she’ll still be dead, but it’s something.’

  ‘What if it doesn’t work, what if something goes wrong?’

  ‘I’ll give you a sign. I’ll give a big cheesy thumbs up,’ Katie stepped away and demonstrated, giving a wide fake smile to go with it. ‘If I do this you know I’m in trouble.’

  ‘Great,’ Max said, looking more unhappy than ever. ‘Then what do I do?’

  Chapter 27

  Katie had been hoping to sit somewhere quiet with Max for five minutes before her shift started and do some serious kissing. She felt in need of a boost and kissing Max was like being plugged into a car battery. In a good way. The scent of pipe smoke told her that wasn’t going to happen. Shouldn’t have arranged to meet in the library. Stupid.

  ‘You are making me stronger,’ Henry said. ‘I can feel it. I’m more connected. I can see more.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ Katie said, still thinking about how much she wanted to kiss Max. She wanted Henry to go. She wanted to be alone with Max and have just a couple of minutes to herself, then his words sank in. ‘Wait a minute. What do you mean “connected”? To this world or the spirit world?’

  ‘Both,’ Henry said, looking smug. ‘I’m hearing all kinds of things. For example, has your young man told you why he wanted to connect to the other side?’

  ‘Max? A medium told him there was a message for him. He didn’t really believe it, but these things can get stuck in your mind, you know—’

  ‘Was the message from a young lady of his acquaintance?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Katie said, her stomach suddenly cold. ‘What do you know?’

  Henry waved a hand. ‘I would say lover.’ He rolled the word around his mouth, as if he was enjoying himself. ‘These days, I believe the term is “girlfriend”.’

  ‘Max wanted a message from his girlfriend?’ Katie said.

  ‘What girlfriend?’ Max walked in, wearing his black work shirt and a name badge.

  ‘Henry’s here.’ Katie moved closer to the ghost. She felt the coldness of Henry, but pictured light filling her, warming her up, and she felt a little less chilled. Maybe Hannah was right. If she held onto the light, she could get close to the ghosts, help them, without passing out. That would be nice.

  Max stared to the left of Katie, then shook his head. ‘Can’t see him. Maybe if I—’ He screwed up his eyes
into a squint and tilted his head to one side.

  ‘He killed her.’ Henry’s voice was flat with none of his usual teasing tone.

  Katie felt the energy rush out of her. Henry seemed taller suddenly. ‘What?’

  ‘Ask him,’ Henry said.

  ‘No.’ Katie shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Max stopped squinting.

  ‘You’re lying,’ Katie said.

  ‘Are you talking to me or him?’ Max took a step towards her and Katie took a step back. ‘He says you killed your girlfriend.’

  The colour went out of Max’s face. After a long, horrible moment, he said, ‘Did Laura tell him that? Is she—?’

  ‘You’re not denying it.’ Katie took another step, edging towards the doorway. Fear was thumping through her now. She was such an idiot. No intuition. No clue on who to trust. He’d told her he was dodgy but she hadn’t believed him. Hadn’t wanted to believe him. Had been seduced by his nice voice and lopsided smile and warm eyes. She’d listened to Lily Thomas, trusted her, and now she’d made the same mistake all over again. Another step.

  ‘It was an accident,’ Max said, very quietly. So quietly that Katie almost didn’t hear him. There was a roaring in her ears but her mind felt frozen solid. As if it had shut down.

  ‘I have to go.’ Katie stumbled out of the room. She ran through the hallway and out of the front door. Outside, the air was like soup. The mugginess of the last day had intensified. Katie dragged in warm breaths, trying to calm her heart, trying to think clearly. She wasn’t a kid, any more. She wasn’t helpless. Max wasn’t going to hurt her. Apart from anything else, they were in a hotel. A very public place. She would get Anna or Jo or even Patrick to tell him to leave and she wouldn’t even have to see him again. Not ever.

  The light had gone strange. Filmic. Katie half expected to see floodlights and cameras. The colours of the garden were saturated, the edges of everything clearly defined, making it look hyper real or like a painted backdrop. There was a roll of thunder somewhere far off and fat rain drops began to fall. The weather was finally breaking. And then the rain got heavier and she realised she was getting drenched.