The coat he wore was long and black, riding down to just above his knees. His stick-thin legs were covered by threadbare trousers, while his worn leather boots had seen better days. A filthy scarf was tied about his throat, trailing down on to the bench beside him. A long staff, not dissimilar to a punting pole, rested against the wall behind him, its tip hidden in the eaves of the station house. His attire was peculiar enough, but it was the stovepipe hat that took me by surprise, the black felt tilted forward, rim obscuring his face.
I had to wonder, perhaps he was one of fairground workers, sneaking off for a sly smoke or catching a bit of shut-eye? Either way, this meant the coast was clear for my mate. I looked over my shoulder and called back to him.
‘It isn’t one of Vinnie’s cronies, Dougie. You can come out! He’s an Abraham Lincoln lookey-likey! Nothing to be worried about!’
I turned back to the man who was dozing on the bench in time to see him raise a bony finger to the rim of his hat. He pushed it back, sitting slowly upright as if hauled forward on invisible ropes. He rose to his feet, like a puppet on a string, wavering where he stood, face still shrouded by shadows.
‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this,’ I whispered as he swivelled his head my way.
Directly my way.
The old lamps that dotted the station suddenly sprang into life, one after another, starting at the far end of the platform and flaring like fireballs. Those lamps had been there since Time was a lad, and I couldn’t recall a single occasion they’d ever worked. Hell, I don’t think they even had bulbs in them! The tip of the pole roared into life, white flames dancing over the dirty bricks of the station house. The last lights to burst into being were those in the crooked man’s eyes as he levelled his hideous gaze upon me.
‘It’s the Lamplighter’s ghost!’ screamed Dougie, briefly stirring me from my paralysed state.
I staggered back clumsily, suddenly feeling terribly exposed and vulnerable before the phantom. The same fear that had gripped Dougie and I when we’d first encountered Phyllis was there again, gripping both our hearts as the Lamplighter approached. He snatched the flaming pole up, swinging it like a scythe in one hand while his other reached forward, skeletal fingers outstretched. The monstrous eyes continued to burn, bright and furious in his wizened black skull, hungry as he tottered toward us on spindly legs.
‘Move, Will!’ shouted Dougie. My friend had found his feet now, but I was terrified. I was dying all over again.
‘I don’t know who you are, old man, but we’ve got no business with you,’ I blabbed, stumbling slowly back to Dougie – too slowly – my legs turning to jelly. I was vaguely aware of the sound of the train, distant but drawing closer, but I couldn’t draw my eyes away from the ghost.
‘Run, Will!’ Again, from Dougie, but I was deaf to his cries, helpless before the Lamplighter.
‘But I have business with you,’ he hissed, a cracked black tongue scraping across dried-up, ruined lips. His finger now pointed straight at me. ‘A soul as bright as yours, child, would make a most marvellous feast on this cold, cruel night.’
It was me he wanted. Not Dougie, not my living, breathing friend. I was the one he could feed upon!
The Lamplighter came forward, a grotesque stick-man, his heels clicking as they found the paved surface of the platform. My throat remained constricted, the phantom squeezing his fist now as if it were buried in my chest, clenched about my heart. The leathery face seemed to crack as a grin spread across it, almost splitting his head in two, his desiccated mouth gaping open as he descended upon me.
I was there one moment, gone the next. It felt like I’d been yanked through the air by a tether, lassoed and whipped away from the Lamplighter before he could get his claws – and teeth – into me. I flew through the air across the tracks, my body passing through the speeding express train as it thundered past the station platform without stopping. Carriages and commuters passed through my spectral form before I emerged on the other side on to the opposite platform.
Dougie had dashed across the footbridge over the tracks, not waiting for me, hoping that our connection would haul me clear before the Lamplighter could harm me. His gamble had done the trick. My friend kept running, exiting the station from the opposite platform, heading back towards the living world and away from the apparition. I looked back as we ran, the lights blinking out on the platform, the ghost disappearing into the darkness.
Each of us emerged on to the road, Dougie almost running headlong into the passing traffic. He collapsed on to the pavement, me by his side, one living, one dead, each of us struggling to compose ourselves. The music of the fairground was welcome to our ears as we tried to smile at one another.
‘The next time I need to get to town, I think I’ll catch the bus,’ gasped Dougie, mopping his brow with the sleeve of his jumper. ‘I’ve always hated trains.’
TWENTY-THREE
Sorrow and Snow
It snowed overnight. This wasn’t the smattering that we usually got, a fleeting sneeze of frost from God’s left nostril. This was heavier than at any time I could remember. A bit of slush mid-February was the most we could expect, gone within a matter of days. Over the course of that one night we appeared to get hit with ten years’ worth of snow, the grim streets transformed into a winter wonderland. It didn’t matter that Warrington was surrounded by factories, chimney stacks and power plants: it could’ve been Santa’s backyard. The world was beautiful again, and I missed it more than ever.
In the history of low profiles, Dougie had reached new depths. Our encounter with the demon Lamplighter was really the least of his worries. His antics at the fair on Danger Night had put him top of the school gossip columns the following day. Where was the kid who had not only stood up to Vinnie Savage but also clocked him one? Sure, he hadn’t punched him – that had been my doing – but to all intents and purposes it had appeared that way. The whispering campaign had raced around the school like wildfire: Savage wasn’t indestructible. He could be harmed by mortal man, better still, by nerds. If this led to the silent legion of put-upon geeks in our school making a stand against the bullying minority, then it was something Dougie could be proud of. Not that he could see that at present. He was too busy keeping his head down, avoiding the limelight as well as the eyes and ears of Savage’s mates. He was hiding in the library.
Of all the rooms within the school, there was one that provided sanctuary against the idiot muscle-heads like Savage. Any bully stepping foot over the library threshold could expect to burn up quicker than a vampire at a picnic. Dougie’s day had been spent flitting from classroom to library, dodging the masses and the steady fall of snow. The fact that his trademark parka was now in the possession of Stu Singer meant that the bomber jacket and bobble hat he wore instead allowed him to move incognito, few people recognising him as the legendary Hero of Danger Night. OK, so that wasn’t what they were calling him. That was what I’d nicknamed him. I say nickname: I was teasing, obviously.
‘They’re writing ballads about you in the music room,’ said Andy, from where he sat in front of the computer monitor. ‘Admittedly it’s a bit screechy when played on recorders, but the sentiment’s there.’
‘Any sign of Stu?’ asked Dougie, ignoring Andy’s mocking.
‘Last seen accepting dares from Year Sevens to sneak on to the roof of Upper School,’ replied our friend with a roll of his eyes.
‘Always showing off,’ I said. ‘He hasn’t the brains he was born with.’
‘You’re not wrong,’ Dougie said.
Stu’s penchant for doing random acts of stupidity was going to get him into trouble one of these days. It was the price he paid for being so frighteningly bright: his words, not mine. Stu was a really clever kid, Mensa level of smarts, but for all that intelligence he had zero common sense. It appeared wisdom didn’t always come with the territory for the gifted and talented.
‘You talking to Will again?’ said Andy in answer to Dougie’s last remark.
‘Sorry,’ he replied. ‘I forget myself sometimes. Don’t feel I have to hide anything when you or Stu are with me.’
‘That’s very sweet,’ Andy said, glancing up from the computer. ‘You’ll be expressing your undying love for me next, I know it.’
Andy was now up to speed on all that had happened at the House. He’d listened in rapt fascination as Dougie had recounted the series of events that had first led us and then taken us back to the House. The more macabre the better with Andy. The Lamplighter had got him really excited. He went so far as asking if we’d take him back to the station to try and encounter the phantom again. That suggestion had been poo-pooed in quite dramatic fashion by Dougie, and I was in no hurry to ever step foot on the platform again. Andy had then set to work.
Although Dungeons and Dragons was his first love, technology was his second, and he was a wizard with computers. Armed with what information we had, he’d spent the last half hour researching the House’s past, and in particular the story behind Phyllis Carrington.
‘What have you discovered?’ asked Dougie, leaning over Andy’s shoulder as he brought up a series of open windows on the screen.
‘Red Brook House was built in 1856, originally opening its doors as a primary school for boys and girls, becoming a senior school after the Second World War. By the time the Sixties rocked up and there’d been a population boom, it was struggling to handle the greater number of children, only able to accommodate two classes for each school year. It was closed in 1966, as Brooklands High opened.’
‘So it’s been closed for almost fifty years?’ I said. ‘Sounds like our maths was spot on with Phyllis, then.’
‘What have you discovered about the girl?’ said Dougie as Andy brought up another window. ‘How did she die?’
‘That’s just the thing,’ shrugged Andy. ‘I’ve searched the old documents that local government keep on file, including news stories from yesteryear. There’s no record of a girl named Phyllis Carrington ever dying.’
‘So she never existed?’
‘That’s not what I said,’ grinned Andy. ‘She existed all right, but she went missing. She vanished in December, 1964.’
I joined Dougie, reading over our friend’s shoulder as he brought up scanned clippings from old newspapers.
‘She wasn’t found,’ Andy continued. ‘One of those mysteries that was never resolved.’ He clicked the windows, reducing them one after another.
‘Whoa!’ I said. ‘That page he just got rid of!’
‘Hang on, Andy,’ said Dougie. ‘Bring that page back up from a moment ago.’
Andy backed up, restoring the pages on to the monitor. ‘This one? Or this?’
‘That’s it!’ I said as a local history website appeared on the screen.
Dougie stopped Andy clicking on anything else. All three of us craned forward, making a closer examination of the page.
‘What am I looking for?’ asked Andy.
The menu bar along the top of the page included links to all manner of local historical interest: industry, famous figures, sporting achievements and the like. I pointed at the screen and Dougie followed me, tapping at one particular link so that Andy could highlight it. He clicked on education and another window appeared.
‘I’m ahead of you,’ he said as a list of years appeared. He clicked on nineteen sixty-four, which brought up the titles of a number of schools. There was Red Brook House. One more click and six thumbnail photographs appeared.
‘Open all and open sesame,’ said Andy, clicking on the lot of them.
‘She was thirteen when she died,’ said Dougie as the senior year photos popped up.
‘The second year seniors,’ I said. ‘Their equivalent of Year Eight.’
Dougie pointed, Andy clicked. The screen was filled with a faded sepia photograph of around sixty children, sat in three rows, each higher than the next. Girls sat on the lower bench, with boys at the back and a mixture in the middle. We each scoured the image, but it was my eyes that found her first, a fraction of a second quicker than Dougie’s as he pointed Phyllis out for Andy.
There she was, the cute, ponytailed girl with bows in her pale hair, front row, third in from the left. Monotone though the photo was, I was in no doubt as to the colour of those ribbons. The names of each child were printed at the base of the photograph, barely legible. Dougie squinted as he read out the name from the front row, third along.
‘P. Carrington.’
My heart skipped a beat, seeing the ghost girl there on the screen, as she was in life. The empathy I already felt for her was magnified, seeing her innocent smile months, weeks, perhaps even days before her terrible fate occurred. My eyes drifted across the crowd of children, my mind imagining the various friendships, acquaintances or indeed rivalries Phyllis might have had with those kids. There was a Lucy Carpenter amongst their number, and a Vinnie Savage no doubt. Which one would’ve been me? I wondered, staring at the boys who stood to attention along the back row. I gasped.
‘Back row, far right,’ I said, as Dougie read out the name.
‘E. Borley.’
He looked back to the rakish figure at the back of the group, the familiar hook nose making him instantly recognisable. The caretaker’s cold, dark eyes stared out of the screen at us, deep into our very souls. Dougie gulped and glanced at me.
‘Crap,’ added Andy, succinctly.
Our shocked stupor was broken by a commotion outdoors. Dougie looked out of the window and could see a crowd had gathered in the playground. There must have been a hundred kids, huddling together in the snow next to the Upper School building.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked.
‘Looks like a fight, perhaps?’ said Dougie.
Andy stood and cranked open the library window to shout at one of the Year Sevens who was rushing past.
‘What’s happened?’
‘That big lad who dared to climb on to the Upper School roof,’ said the kid excitedly, his face a mixture of horror and morbid excitement. ‘He’s only gone and jumped, hasn’t he.’
Andy and Dougie didn’t wait around, grabbing their jackets and bags as they legged it for the door. I floated along beside them, fearing what awaited us when we got to the scene of the fall, a blizzard of snow hitting us as we dashed outdoors. I always said his stupidity would be the death of Stu. I hadn’t suspected this might be that day.
TWENTY-FOUR
Accident and Emergency
It was the last place I’d expected to return to. I thought after my sudden departure from the living world I was done with the General Hospital, but here I was back, only this time with Dougie and on account of another poor fool. Actually, scratch that. I hadn’t been foolish. I couldn’t have foreseen what would happen to me on the awful night of my death. Nobody had made Stu climb on to the top of the Upper School. Nobody had bent his arm, forced him to scramble on to an icy rooftop three storeys high. He could have avoided the terrible fate that had followed, but a brain-fart of colossal proportions had prevented common sense from kicking in. I mean, what harm could possibly come to anyone on top of a lofty, snow-covered building in blizzard conditions?
By the time Dougie and I arrived at the hospital, the night was already drawing in. Dougie had grabbed a bus into Warrington straight after school, travel by rail still an impossibility thanks to the train station’s resident soul-devouring ghost. We had journeyed in shocked silence, wondering what awaited us. As we walked up to the entrance to A&E, I felt a sickening dread rising in the pit of my stomach. The blue lights on ambulances flashed nearby, casting their pale, revolving glow on to the hospital’s grim walls. Here was the building where I’d put together my terrible conundrum. This was where I’d realised I was dead, returned as a ghost. I stopped walking, hovering in the air outside the sliding doors as paramedics and patients rushed in and out. Dougie stood to one side, dragging me with him.
‘Are you OK, Will?’
‘I’m just a bit . . . apprehensive.’
‘Understandable, mate, under the circumstances.’
Neither of us knew how bad things might be for Stu. By the time we’d arrived at the scene of his fall, a dozen teachers had already formed a ring around him, while others proceeded to shoo students away. Dougie had tried to squeeze through to see better, but had found his path blocked. I faced no such obstacle. I drifted forward, phasing through geography teacher Mr Hopwood, until I stood over my stricken friend. Mrs Jolly, the school nurse, crouched beside Stu, leaning over him, talking to him, seeing if she could stir a response from him. He lay spreadeagled on his back, limbs out at every angle, buried deep in the snow. As Dougie was forced away from the scene, I was drawn back with him, away from Stu’s motionless body. The remainder of the day had been spent worrying about what condition he was in, as an ambulance arrived and whisked him hurriedly away.
‘Do you think . . . if anything happens to Stu . . .?’ said Dougie.
‘What? That he’ll come back like me? I don’t know. I’m not sure how the whole ghostly gubbins works, mate. Think of Phyllis. Who knows what her story is?’
‘It’s fair to say Borley’s at the heart of it,’ said Dougie. ‘We need to see her again. Find out—’
His words were cut short as he stared slack-jawed into the building. I turned to see what had silenced him.
‘You seeing him too?’ he asked, and I nodded.
A man in his early thirties, wreathed in a pale light, was walking through the A&E lobby, clad in an old-fashioned military uniform. He turned our way as he strode confidently by, coming to a halt between the sliding doors. Rank insignia adorned his left breast pocket, marking him as an officer. He smiled at us both before sending his hand to his brow in an elegant salute. Then he was on his way again, disappearing through the wall at the end of the reception area.
‘OK,’ I said with a whisper. ‘That was interesting. Make a note in your little black book, Dougie: return to hospital and have a chat with “the Major” at some point in near future.’
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