Mary Hades

by Sarah Dalton

  The Five Moors sign comes into view, illuminated by the moonlight on a clear summer night.

  “Home, sweet home,” Neil says.

  “What the hell?” Lemmarr stops stock still next to me. His grip tightens on my arm. “Do you see that?”

  Large, scrawled red lines appear on the sign as though they are being written by an invisible pen, except the strokes are unlike any kind of pen I know. It’s more like a fingertip dipped in… in… blood.

  No.

  My throat tightens, my chest heaves, and panic rises from deep in my bowels.

  The words spell: You’re next.

  Chapter Twelve

  You’re next.

  You’re next.

  A cruel taunt followed by a sleepless night of imagining bloodied fingers scrawling along the walls of my tiny bedroom. And when I eventually fall asleep, I dream. Seth features in those dreams. Sometimes the bloodied fingers belong to him, and his impish grin, the one I found so swoon-worthy, turns into a manic smile.

  Death seems as attracted to me as a moth to a flame. It’s not so much a lingering odour as a downright stalker. My thoughts are tinged with it, the world is tinged with it, the bright yellow glow of July turns to the gloomy fade of the coming winter. The few glorious days of summer we get each year in Yorkshire are on their way out. This is it. This is the end.

  “Sausage?” Mum lifts one up with her fork.

  My stomach churns. “No, thank you.”

  “Is it because of that nice young man? Hasn’t he called, sweetheart?”

  Dad raises an eyebrow. “Probably for the best.”

  Mum shoots him a glare. “Ignore your father. I thought he was nice. I have good instincts for people, you know.”

  “He never gave me his phone number. He had to dash off the other day and we never had chance.”

  “Oh, that is a shame. Still, there are plenty more fish in the sea, darling. What about that nice Goth boy with the hair?”

  “He has a boyfriend.”

  Mum’s brow creases. “Really? Well, I never would have guessed.”

  “I think I’m gonna go for a walk,” I say, pushing away my untouched plate.

  On the way out of the caravan, I hear Mum say, “Poor thing.”

  It’s one of those mornings where the sun is struggling behind low mist, the kind where there is a dusting of dew in the grass and you button your cardigan to the neck. There’s a hint of a sunny day trying to escape and in need of a little encouragement. The group of Goths in the nearby caravans haven’t woken up yet, but the elderly couple from the disco are power walking around the footpath. I raise a hand to them and say good morning. Then I make my way around our van.

  “’S’up, bitch?” Lacey leaps out from behind the caravan, her image flickering like a flame.

  “Do you want to give me a heart attack?” I ask, rolling my eyes in her direction.

  “Well, that would give me some company in the afterlife,” she says with a grin.

  On most days, even the tough ones, Lacey’s comic relief is just that. A relief. A breath of fresh air. But today, I can’t stand it. I can’t stand her flippancy when I know what is happening all around me.

  “Hey,” she asks. “What’s the matter?”

  That does it for me. I find my voice raising. “What’s the matter? What’s the matter? Well, let’s see shall we? First of all, I have a date with a guy and almost die when a bloody Ferris wheel goes bonkers. Then I get attacked by a ghost on the moors, oh, and almost die again. Then I find out that the guy I’m sort of seeing might be a psycho, and then, on the way home from a stupid ghost walk, I find out that the stupid ghost who tried to murder me, has sent me a creepy message in blood. That’s what’s wrong. Don’t you get it?”

  Lacey’s blue eyes flash. Her image distorts like an un-tuned TV picture. “Amy appeared to you again?”

  “No,” I reply. “She wrote the message but while she was invisible.”

  “Don’t worry, Mares, we’re going to sort this out,” Lacey says. “We’re going to stop her.” She pauses, watching me with slightly narrowed eyes. “There’s something else bothering you, isn’t there? What is it? Is it what I said about Seth?”

  “I don’t think he’s a murderer,” I say.

  “Well, I don’t think we should rule out the possibility—”

  “No,” I repeat, firmer this time. “I don’t think he’s a murderer. Look, you remember how I felt like something was wrong with Dr. Gethen in Magdelena? Well, it’s the opposite with Seth. I know he’s a good person. I know he isn’t capable of murder. It sounds stupid, I get it. I’ve known him a couple of days and that’s it, but it’s more than that. It’s about me. I think I have some sort of power that means I can suss people out. I think my instincts are stronger than most people. I can see badness.”

  “Fine,” she replies.

  “You don’t sound fine,” I say.

  “I thought you’d listen to me, that’s all,” she replies. “I’m serious, you know. Amy recognised Seth and that means he could be dangerous. You shouldn’t see him.”

  “You sound like my dad,” I say with a forced laugh. It’s starting to freak me out how serious Lacey is.

  “Well maybe your dad’s right. You don’t know anything about the guy.” As she gets more and more annoyed with me, her hands begin to flail and her hair lifts from her shoulders. In one heart stopping moment I see a similarity between her and Amy, in the way they move.

  I blink it away and let out a long sigh. “This is silly. We shouldn’t be arguing, we should be figuring out how to stop Amy from killing anyone else. I nearly died out there. She nearly killed—”

  “She nearly killed Seth,” Lacey finishes. “That means we need to look at why she targeted Seth to figure out what happened to her. It might help stop her.”

  “Mary?”

  I turn away from Lacey. I never heard Neil approach me, and now he’s seen me talking to an invisible ghost.

  “Neil,” I breathe. “It’s not how it looks.”

  “Well, it looks like you’re talking to yourself, Mary. Are you all right?” he frowns.

  “Tell him,” Lacey says. “He can take it. I know he can. I’ll show myself to him. He can help us stop Amy.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “You’re still talking to yourself,” Neil says. He keeps a safe distance away, in case I’m crazy enough to be violent. I’ve seen that look before, that keep-the-hell-away-from-me look.

  “Neil, you know how we were talking about Amy’s death, and the fact that she haunts the campsite?” I say, carefully. “Did you mean it? Do you believe in ghosts?”

  “Where is this going?” he says, still keeping his distance.

  “If we go somewhere a little more private, I’ll show you.”

  “Yeah, I’m not too sure about that, Mary. I think public is good, right about now.” He takes a step back.

  Just once, I’d love it if someone gave me the benefit of the doubt, instead of treating me like a damn leper as soon as I act differently to everyone else. There could be a bloke with a gun walking down the street and people would still be more frightened of the unarmed guy talking to himself. Well, you know what? Maybe he has a ghost friend too, or he’s having a bad day, or the voices in his head are actually nice, you know? We’re not all murdering lunatics, us crazies.

  “Please, Neil.”

  He tilts his head, measuring me, weighing the chances of me running him through with a knife.

  “For God’s sake, I weigh like half of you, as if I could hurt you.”

  He sighs. “Fine. But within screaming distance of the campsite.”

  “Agreed. You might be an axe murderer, for all I know.”

  “I’m really not,” he replies.

  I take him near to the abandoned fair. Lacey stays by my side, subdued, her eyes cast down towards her feet. There’s a part of me wondering if she hates Seth because she’s jealous that I’ve found someone. It must be frightening to s
ee anything change in my life, because nothing can change in her life again. She doesn’t even have a life anymore. I can’t help it, the thought is there. How long will it take for her to turn into an Amy?

  And if she does? What will I do?

  “All right,” Neil says. “I get the feeling I’m either going to meet my violent end, or you’re going to show me something that blows my mind. Which is it going to be?”

  “Prepare to have your mind blown,” I say. “Lace, you ready?”

  No witty come back. She must be upset. But she nods, and then closes her eyes to concentrate.

  Instead of watching Lacey I turn towards Neil, so I see the look on his face when he finds out that ghosts are real. I want this to work. I have high hopes that Neil and his death-obsessed friends can help us find out how to get rid of Amy once and for all.

  “Remember last night, when we saw the words appear on the sign?” I say.

  “I half thought that was a dream,” he says.

  “It wasn’t. It was real.”

  Neil jumps backwards when Lacey appears. His foot catches on a clod of dirt and he falls on his bum. I walk towards him and hold out my hand to help him up.

  “What the…? Who’s that?”

  “I’m Lacey,” she says with a small, hard smile on her face. “We’ve already met. Remember that cold chill you got when we were on the ghost walk last night? Yeah, that was me.”

  Neil lets out a breath that’s more like a nervous laugh. “That was… that was… you? You’re… you’re…”

  “A ghost, a spirit, a ghoul… whatever, yeah, that’s me. The dead girl who follows Mary around and inconveniently makes her look like a mental case.” Two cold little eyes turn to me.

  “I’m a mental case anyway. I have the prescription to prove it,” I say.

  “This is…” Neil can’t take his eyes off Lacey. “Can I… If I touched you, would my hand disappear right through?”

  The questions continue for a while. Neil pokes Lacey in the shoulder over and over again, manically giggling every time he feels the electric charge of her ghost form.

  “There’s something… I don’t know, magnetic? Static? Electric? How does it work?”

  “I don’t know,” Lacey says. “Mary doesn’t know, either. And we don’t know any ghosts to ask.”

  “So you see ghosts all the time?” he asks.

  “Only if they choose to be seen, which many of them don’t. I guess they don’t want to be seen by anyone, not even someone touched by death, like me.”

  “And regular people don’t see anything at all?”

  “I have to concentrate hard to show myself,” Lacey explains.

  “Huh,” Neil says. “And Little Amy, she really exists?”

  “Oh, she exists all right, and she’s nothing like Lace. She’s a monster. She nearly killed me. That was her with the sign. She’s sending me a warning.” I finger my throat. “I’m next.”

  “Why you?”

  I shrug. “I think I know someone she doesn’t like.”

  We tell Neil all about Seth and how he saw Amy and even talked to her. The hairs stick up on the backs of my arms as I relay the story, my heart twisting.

  “I hate to break it to you,” Neil says. “But Lacey is right. Seth has a connection to Amy. There’s a good chance that he could be linked to her death. I’m sorry, Mary, I know you like this guy, but you don’t know anything about him.”

  My skin prickles with the chill.

  “Do you know how to kill a ghost?” I ask him. “I know you guys came here to see Amy. What do you know about ghost hunting? Do you know how to get rid of them? How to send them back to hell, or wherever they come from?”

  “Does hell exist?” He turns to Lacey with his eyes open wide with fear.

  She shrugs. “Maybe. I dunno. I think once you finally let yourself go, you don’t come back. It could be nothingness, for all I know. Maybe I’m nothing but a shadow, an imprint left by my existence. Maybe that’s why it’s all tied to static, to this weird electrical charge. I’m still matter, still functioning, somehow.”

  “Is that how you feel?” I ask, surprised. She’s never revealed those fears before.

  “Kinda,” she admits.

  “But how would your brain work?” Neil says. “If you were an imprint, you wouldn’t be able to think the way you do. You’d be stuck in a loop, forever living out the last moments of your life. No, I think this is your soul, and your soul is controlled by you. As soon as you decide what you want to do, your soul moves on.”

  And that’s when I know telling Neil was the right thing to do. Lacey’s features soften, become peaceful. We’ve no way of knowing if Neil is right, but it’s what Lacey needed to hear right now, and what I couldn’t put into words. He’s done my job for me, and he’s done it better than I ever could have.

  “So, what’s next?” I say. “We’ve got a bat-shit crazy ghost coming after me. We need to make a plan, figure out what we’re going to do.”

  Neil opens then closes his mouth. Eventually, he lifts a finger in the air. “I have an idea. Let’s go get some hot chocolate.”

  *

  Logic is fun. Logic helps you learn. But in this case, logic tells me Seth could be a murderer, and that we don’t know how to deal with Amy.

  The facts: Amy was killed five years ago and her murderer was never found. A dog walker discovered her body on the moors. The killer hadn’t even tried to cover her up. She was the only young girl killed; there were no more murders after Amy’s death. Since her death, mysterious accidents have claimed the lives of men, varying in age from ten years old to those in their sixties. Amy is able to lift, push, hurl, squeeze, write, slither, and float. Lacey can hurt her. She can hurt Lacey. Lightning seems to at least startle her. Also, Seth and Amy have history.

  “Maybe that’s the key,” Neil suggests. “Maybe we need another jolt of electricity to get rid of her for good.”

  “But how are we going to hit her with electricity stronger than lightning?” I say. “Ooh! What are those power packs called in Ghostbusters? We need one of those.”

  Neil almost snorts out his hot chocolate.

  “No,” Lacey says. I relay everything she says to Neil. He can’t see her in the café, because then everyone would be able to see her. “Electricity makes me feel more alive. I don’t think that’s it. There has to be an alternative, an incantation, a spell or whatever, that will send her away.”

  “What we need, is a ghost expert,” Neil says.

  “Like Igor, the guy from the ghost tours,” I suggest.

  Neil’s eyes widen in excitement. “Exactly!” He waggles his eyebrows mysteriously. Then he checks his phone. “Shit, I’m meant to be meeting Lemarr for lunch. Can we meet up after? Like two-ish?”

  “All right. Ask around your crew, see if anyone knows more about Igor,” I say.

  “It could be worth a shot,” Neil replies.

  I turn to Lacey. “Yeah, why not.”

  A weight lifts from my shoulders. Maybe Mum was right. I do need friends. Having Neil around feels like my problems are halved. His knowing about Lacey makes everything so much easier.

  We take a leisurely stroll back to Five Moors. Someone has kindly removed the bloody graffiti from the sign, but my eyes linger there anyway. The sun never made it out of the mist and turned into an overcast day instead—one that feels like another thunderstorm lurks in the bellies of the clouds overhead. There’s a grey tinge to the world, an oppressive heat, and a pressure that builds up in your sinuses.

  “No way,” Lacey says. She sees him first, sat on the same picnic bench as before, not reading this time, but staring at the moors instead. “I’ll deck him.”

  “Is that Seth?” Neil asks. “Do not talk to him without me here. I’m staying with you.” He straightens up, stretching himself to full height. He swallows. “He looks kinda… muscular. Reckon I could take him? You know… if I have to do a citizen’s arrest?”

  “You could take him,” Lac
ey says, even though he can’t hear her.

  I ignore the both of them and walk straight up to him.

  His eyes widen when he sees my expression. He raises his hands as though in submission. “I have some explaining to do.”

  “Damn right you do.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “So, you can see ghosts?” he says.

  “Did you kill her?” I blurt out.

  “Who?” He stares at me like I’m mad.

  “Who do you think? Amy—the twelve year old ghost who almost strangled me to death.”

  Neil stands behind me with his arms folded, his watchful eyes at my back.

  “What the… No! What? How could you?” he shakes his head in disbelief. Then he lowers his voice to a rasping whisper. “I was fifteen years old when Amy Willis went missing. She went to my school. She played with my little cousins. I did not kill her.” He swallows.

  “Then explain to me why Amy turned to you. Explain how you knew her, why you said she was coming for you. Explain that, if you didn’t kill her,” I say.

  “You tell him, Mares.” Lacey rubs my shoulder with hers, sending an electric charge through my body.

  He shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath. “It’s difficult. It’s… It’s not a memory I want to relive.” He rakes his fingers through his hair, pulling on the ends. He’s trembling, I realise.

  “You have to,” I say. “Or I’ll arrest you myself.”

  When he speaks, it’s like a dying breath, a croak. “I saw it. I saw him do it and I didn’t stop him…”

  I’m half aware of Neil behind me. The air seems to thicken and darken, as though trying to clot. Seth’s eyes are almost closed, his hands are clamped around the edge of the picnic bench. Every part of his body is rigid with fear or frustration. He’s paler than usual, and his breath sounds laboured.

  “What?” I whisper.

  “I was there,” he says again. His eyes open half-way and meet mine. “But I didn’t kill her.”