by Sarah Dalton
Rain.
So much rain.
Seth pulls back and turns his head to the sky. “Your mum was right.”
The shadows of the clouds cover Seth’s face with their gloom. A ripple of thunder echoes through the air. Rivulets of water travel down his face, soaking his hair. Raindrops nestle within his stubble.
“We should go,” he says, almost shouting over the sound of the rain.
A bolt of lightning jerks through the sky, too close for comfort. “Okay.”
He takes my hand and we turn to leave, the moor stretching out behind us. But when we turn, I come face to face with a monster.
She hovers from the floor, her eyes fixed on mine, half obscured by the oil slick of hair covering her face. The red blood drips from her dress and fingers. Beneath the curtain of hair her skin is pallid, almost grey-blue tinged. The sight of her is so sudden it’s like hearing a bomb go off nearby. Time stops for a fraction of a second. My body freezes, and the rain drops hang in the air. The world melts away.
She is untouched by the rain. Of course she is.
I don’t care if I’m used to seeing the dead. I don’t care if I know she’s a ghost. I scream. I scream so loud it pierces through the rain, cutting through the rumble of thunder. And then, with Seth’s hand in mine, I run.
Chapter Eleven
Scientists say that under extreme stress, your body has two choices: Fight or flight.
Last time I faced a murderer—I fought. I was prepared then. I’d made the decision to face him, to fight him. This time, Amy catches me by surprise, and it leaves me reacting in an unexpected way: running for my life.
Seth tries to pull me back but I keep running. I dodge around Amy and she snarls at me, opening her black mouth to reveal dirty teeth. He chases me. Amy stands and watches me leave.
“Mary?” he calls. “What’s wrong?”
The rain plasters my hair, my clothes, my underwear, to my body. I’m chilled to the bone. I slow long enough to say, “We need to get out of here.”
He reaches for me again, but this time he never gets to my hand. Instead, he’s ripped away from me, tossed aside like a rag doll.
“Seth!”
I change direction. My feet squelch in the wet earth, sinking into the sodden grass as I hurry towards Seth. He is crumpled up on the ground, unmoving.
And then Amy floats towards him, her tiny toes dangling in the air.
“No!” I yell. “Get away from him!”
I throw myself towards the ghost, almost forgetting I can’t touch her. She snarls again, turning to face me, the tendrils of her hair moving slower than the rest of her body, as though disconnected with the laws of physics. Her tongue snakes out in a hiss. I freeze mid-step and her hand—a child’s hand—reaches out to grasp my throat.
She’s on me in a second, her blood-shot eyes inches away. She opens her mouth in a hiss, and her tongue snakes out preternaturally, twisting in sick, physically impossible motions. I try to pull away from her, desperate for distance from this hideous thing. This girl who isn’t a girl, who seems like she never was.
Her grip tightens.
I struggle for breath. My hands clench by my sides. I’m vaguely aware of my fingernails digging into flesh, but it’s nothing, nothing compared to the burning in my throat, the tightening in my lungs, the raw, animalistic fear that comes from lack of oxygen.
Amy’s hair lifts, moving against the wind and the rain. The tendrils stretch out, like a thousand tiny arms, or living snakes, spreading above her as though she floats in water. The motion reveals her eyes.
Those eyes.
Cavernous and black. Glinting with the red sheen of a rat’s. The bloodshot eyeballs fade into her blue-tinged skin. A hiss of air escapes from her mouth, putrid and inhuman.
“Please…” I squeeze out, struggling in the tiniest breath of air to keep me going.
She floats closer and the electric chill of her ghost form rubs against my wet body. I can’t look anywhere except her eyes, the caves of darkness, madness, searching me, searching my soul.
There’s a raspy, croaking noise. It takes me a few moments to realise it’s me. Panic fills my chest, rising from the pit of my stomach. My hands unclench and reach forward, my nails trying to scrape against her tiny ghost hands, but scraping my own neck instead. I claw at her face. It does nothing. I can’t connect… I can’t…
The grey-soaked spongy clouded scene drifts away from me in a fade of black spots.
My body is shutting down, giving up. I’m flighting.
This is it.
“Mary!”
Seth.
I try to croak his name. But I don’t know if it works. What must he be seeing right now? Me, dying on my own, stood in a field. Asphyxiating without anything to strangle me.
“It’s not her that you want.”
The words chill me deeper than bones, deep, deep into the marrow inside, into every vessel, every neuron, every receptor.
He can see her?
Amy’s attention is torn. Her fingers slip and I gulp in a deep breath of air. My lungs burn, but I need that air, I’m hungry for it. Her eyes are still on mine, but I feel the change, the lack of intensity, the need in her to turn.
She does.
Her fingers leave my throat and I rub life back into my crushed windpipe.
“That’s it, it’s me you want, isn’t it?” Seth says.
What is happening?
“Come on, come to me.”
I watch Amy’s hair cut through the rain. Her white sundress ripples around her. She floats away.
“What’s happening?” I croak. “You can see her?”
But Seth isn’t looking at me. His eyes are fixated on the dead thing in the middle of the moor.
“I know it’s me you want. So take me.”
Why does he keep saying that? Why would Amy want him?
Amy opens her blood soaked arms wide. She’s like a puppet, jerked by strings. The water effect lifts her hair, spreading out the tendrils. They are power-soaked oil slicks, each strand alive.
Seth flies back, hitting the ground with a thump. Suddenly the pain in my throat seems insignificant. I’m running towards him, ready to face her together. Before I know it, I’m on my knees at his side, staring up at the monster above us.
There’s one thing I can think of, one thing that might help us.
“Lacey!” I tilt my head back and shout as loud as I can. “Lacey!” My throat is raw, it’s like swallowing rocks, but I force the words out.
Then I help Seth to his feet, leaning him against me.
“Lacey!”
A bolt of lightning illuminates Amy. She rolls her head around her neck, tongue slipping in and out of her mouth, floating towards us. It’s the most hideous thing I’ve ever seen.
There’s a crackle. Another rumble of thunder. Then Lacey.
Her eyes are on me first. Her mouth is open in a question. Then she turns.
“Holy shit,” she says. But it takes a lot to rankle my dead best friend. “You must be Amy. Hi, nice to meet you. I’m also dead, but not quite as psychotic.”
Amy snarls, her blackened tongue snaking around her rotten teeth. With a lurch of my lunch, I realise that she can’t speak. That human quality is gone, now. All traces of humanity are gone.
Lacey and Amy size each other up. I can’t see Lacey’s face, only view her back, with her shoulders squared. My hand slips into Seth’s, instinctively.
“I can see them both,” he says. He exhales and his eyes widen. “Who is she?”
“My friend,” I reply. “My ghost friend.”
There’s a question on his lips, but now is no time to ask it. My friend is in danger and I don’t know how to help her.
Amy rushes forwards, her mouth open wide, a screech like a banshee ringing out through the open moors. Her feet trail the tops of the grassy reeds, dirty toenails pointing down. Lacey runs, shouting a war cry, flickering on and off as she moves, jerking towards the floating girl.
When they collide my stomach clenches. I grip Seth’s hand.
“Lacey, be careful!” I shout. A stupid, redundant shout, but it’s all I can think to do.
As they grapple, leaning one way then leaning the next, Amy’s hair tendrils slip down Lacey’s arms and she cries out.
“Lacey!”
“Mary, get the hell out of here! Get away from her!”
“No!” I won’t leave her. Not with that monster.
Amy pushes Lacey down and I can see my friend weakening. This ghost has five years on her. Five years of taking lives and gaining strength from it. But I should never underestimate the bravery of my friend, because she puts all of her weight into one last shove and throws the murderous ghost away from her. Amy doesn’t fall, but her neat floating trick fails and her feet are lost in the long strands of moor grass. Lacey, her form flickering as she weakens, climbs to her feet.
The monster is not done with her yet. My chest constricts with panic and fear as Amy tilts back her head and rolls her eyes. She stretches out her hands, the blood dripping from her fingers, pulsing with new life, and then clenches them into tight little fists.
“Okay,” Lacey says. “I think it’s time to run, now.”
But as we turn to run, a bolt of lightning shoots down from the sky, and it hits Amy bang in the middle of her forehead. She lets out an animalistic scream which descends into a hiss, before jerking her body backwards and forwards. With her eyes wide and her mouth open in a snarl, she flickers on and off and then she’s gone.
Her absence is sudden and strange. We stare at each other—now alone—on a moor that seems bigger than before. The rain disperses into a gentle pitter-patter, no longer the relentless torrent it was before.
Seth drops my hand and rakes his fingers through his hair. He stares at me first, then Lacey. “I have to get out of here.”
Before I can say a word, or lift a hand to stop him, he’s gone, his trainers leaving muddy footprints through the grass.
“Wow, what a scaredy-cat,” Lacey says with a shrug.
*
I could kill for a bath. Instead, I scrub myself clean under the pitiful excuse for a shower in the static caravan. The soap is a slither that escapes my trembling fingers every few seconds.
Every frightening horror movie moment flashes through my mind. Bathrooms are bad: women are hacked to death in shower scenes; they feel ghost fingers on the back of their skull. I daren’t close my eyes, not even when I wash the shampoo from my hair; instead I let it burn.
My fingers linger on my neck. She left no bruise. It was like she had never even been there.
A monstrous child with the strength of five men and the humanity of none.
I shiver again.
The shower turns off with a clunk. My feet slip a little as I step out, and I jump at my own reflection in the mirror. My soaked, straggly black hair is too reminiscent of the oil slick of tendrils around Amy’s head. Again, I shudder. That image will never leave me. Never.
And now a new mystery. Seth saw her, and he knew her. He said that it was him she wanted. Why?
That thought continues to plague my mind as I dress and leave the caravan. The air is clean and crisp. It smells like the end of a storm—fresh, but with the slight tang of wet soil. There’s a chill on the breeze which is pleasant against my clean skin.
I don’t want to be out in the clean air. Every instinct is telling me to climb into bed, pull the covers over my head and pretend Amy isn’t real. But instead, I’m looking for answers. I’m forcing myself to dig deeper. So I’m going to the one person who might be able to help.
Neil’s boyfriend is called Lemarr, and has little skulls threaded through his dreads. I’ve never met a mixed race gay Goth couple before, but they’re kinda cute together. Lemarr rolls his eyes at Neil’s lame jokes. They both gush over my “translucent” skin. Neither of them know a ghost is three feet away from them.
It was Lacey’s idea to meet up with Neil again. After all, he’s the one who knew about Amy in the first place. Now we’re in the village, on a ghost walk. Yep, that’s right. After nearly dying at the hands of a ghost, I’m on a damn tour of the most haunted spots in the area, with a ghost. Lacey—obviously—finds it hilarious. I had to talk her out of the idea of jumping out of shadows at the other ghost walkers.
It’s all a big joke. None of these people know what it’s like, and if they’d met Little Amy on the moors, they wouldn’t want to meet another ghost ever, ever again. They’ll never understand how my nightmares will forever be filled with tiny ghost hands against my neck and empty black eyes that search your soul…
I recognise the tour guide from the leaflets in the hotel. He’s the kind of guy you’d see treading the boards at the local amateur dramatic production of Dracula. He wears the full get up, tall Victorian black hat, coat-tails, black nail varnish… he out-Goths the Goths I’m with; shows them how to do it old-school, with class.
Everything is a performance, from the way he speaks, to the dramatic sweep of his arms. As we walk through the cobbles of the old streets, I discover the sordid history of the sleepy town, the opium dens and the arsenic murders, the mobsters hiding in the shadows, the organised crime that filtered all the way down to London from Nettleby; smugglers and wreckers who worked the nearby coastline; desperate men. He then goes on to talk about serial killers from the last thirty years and I can’t suppress my shudder.
“You all right, love?” Neil whispers. “I didn’t peg you for the easily spooked.”
If only he knew the truth. “I’m not. Serial killers give me the chills.”
Lemarr leans forward. “Me too.”
Our tour guide moves on. As we walk around the village, the isolation of the place hits me. I think of the way the moors stretch out on all sides, connected to the nearest town by one main road and a criss-cross of narrow lanes. There must be something about the moors that attract these murderers—that draw them out.
“Tell us about Little Amy,” someone asks.
Igor pauses. A shadow crosses his face. “That’s one murder I’ll never forget. I knew her, you know, I knew her parents. I don’t like to talk about it, because I knew her.” He shakes his head and looks away.
“Did they ever find the murderer?” another voice, male, pierced eyebrow.
“No,” he says. His voice is small and quiet. “No, they never found him.”
Lacey glances towards me. “Don’t you think it’s strange that Amy knew Seth?”
The words cut through me. Her face says it all. The murderer was never caught. It happened five years ago. Seth would have been fifteen, Amy twelve. I shudder. No, what is she saying? That can’t be right. I shake my head, no.
“Think about it, Mares. Think about the teenagers who have killed younger children, those with troubled childhoods and a fascination with death. It fits. I don’t trust him.”
I want to scream at her. She’s the one who told me to ask him out in the first place. She told me to go for it, to take a chance. When we almost died on the Ferris wheel, she encouraged me to put my life in his hands. Now she’s saying she doesn’t trust him?
“Not here,” I say with a hiss.
Neil turns to me with a questioning look in his eyes.
We move on. Lacey is quiet and I exhale with relief. But she never meets my eyes, instead she stares into the shadows between houses like she sees more than we can.
My mind is abuzz with thoughts, so I try to focus on the tour guide and the ghost walk. I almost will the ghosts of Nettleby to reveal themselves to me, longing for a distraction. At one point, a burnt girl stares from a window, her face an ember, a lump of coal. Charred ribbons hang from what little hair she has left. I never realised how many remnants there are left from those who have died. It’s not just the ghosts or spirits from the dead, it’s the echoes too—memories from those who knew them, items of clothing passed on to charity shops, antiques sold at auction, the houses standing tall and proud, trodden ground, w
alked on by millions of feet. No matter where we are, it’s an intrusion on where someone has been, where someone has died. I’m a speck—nothing more, nothing less—one of the billions who will come and go as the echoes remain. Instead of fear, it brings me comfort. I don’t feel so alone, somehow.
Neil gets us a cup of tea from a burger van outside the one nightclub in Nettleby.
“Fancy it?” Lemarr asks, nodding towards the entrance.
A parade of girls, barely legal, in heels as high as the stack of books I have to read, stagger their way down the steps. One pauses to puke.
“Erm, no. I think I might head back to the site.”
“We’ll walk you home,” Neil says. “You’re pale as milk. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I can’t help glancing at Lacey with a smile. She returns the smile, but with a guilty look in her eye.
“It’s okay. If you want to go to the club—”
“We’re coming with you,” Lemarr insists, putting his arm through mine. Neil does the same on the other side.
“Someone wants a threesome,” Lacey says with a smirk. “You up for it, Mary?”
I narrow my eyes at her. Neil notices and frowns. I know he suspects I’m hiding something. What I don’t know, is how deeply he actually believes in ghosts. If I told him, if Lacey revealed herself to him, would he turn and run a mile? Or would he help? Is he someone I can trust?
It’s a fairly short walk back to the campsite. I glance at my watch, not even midnight yet. My mind turns to Seth. There’s no way he’s the killer. He can’t be.
But how else would Amy know him?
Could I risk it? Could I risk talking to him? I think of how relaxed he made me feel, how at ease. Women felt like that around Ted Bundy as well, you dolt.
But Seth is no Ted Bundy, and Nettleby doesn’t have a high murder rate. There aren’t scores of missing little girls unaccounted for. There could be many reasons why Amy recognised Seth. Igor mentioned that he knew her. It’s a small village. I can’t make any judgements until I know more about the facts. Then, I’ll have to decide whether Seth could be a murderer. For now, I have to trust my instinct, and my instinct says he’s innocent.
