The Ghost House

by Helen Phifer

  I walked through the house to the drawing room and stared at my reflection in the mirror above the fireplace. It was hard to believe that it was me staring back for I looked so much older and very much like a street urchin. How I had aged in such a short space of time? My dress was filthy; covered in blood, soil and sweat. My hands were pitted with black soil underneath my fingernails and my hair was hanging loose around my face where Edward had pulled it almost from my scalp. I stopped at the sideboard where the decanters of whisky and brandy are kept on display and I uncorked the brandy, for the whisky was Edwards’s favourite, and then poured a large glass. I lifted my unsteady hands to my lips and then gulped. The first mouthful felt like a ball of flames rolling down my throat but it warmed my frozen body. I coughed and spluttered for a minute.

  Once I had regained control of myself I picked up the crystal decanter and made my way to the stairs. The house was silent until the grandfather clock chimed the hour. I made the long ascent up to the safety of my attic room and shut the door behind me. I have no idea who or what I was hiding from; maybe I am hiding from myself. I just needed to be alone to grieve and to beg God for his forgiveness. I sat in front of the window, watching the rabbits play on the front lawn and I drank until I could not remember anything and the darkness took me to a peaceful slumber where I dreamt that Alfie came to collect me and take me away from this house of horror.

  Chapter 28

  The persistent knocking on the door roused him from his sleep. It got louder and louder until he staggered off the bed and went downstairs to see who it was, hitting his shin on the hall table.

  ‘I’m coming for Christ’s Sake.’ He saw Edith and Beryl, two of his mother’s friends, peering through the glass in the front door. Crap. He opened it. ‘Good afternoon, ladies, can I help you?’

  Both women looked at each other, and then Edith stepped forward. ‘Where’s your mother? She knows we come around at three on a Wednesday.’

  He grimaced at the thought of his mother’s now frozen body stuffed into the freezer. ‘Gone out.’

  Beryl leant closer to him. ‘“Gone out”? What do you mean “gone out”? We’ve been coming here for the last ten years. The only time I’ve ever missed it was when my Frank passed away, God rest his soul, but I was back the next week. Your mother wouldn’t just go out without letting one of us know.’

  ‘You’re right. I’m sorry, I meant she’s gone away. My aunt in Blackpool took ill yesterday. She was rushed to hospital with a stroke and mother’s gone to see her. I drove her to the station yesterday teatime to catch the five o’clock train. She said to apologise but she’ll be back in a few days and will ring you then.’

  Edith glared at him and he felt as if he had been interrogated by one of Hitler’s henchmen. ‘Make sure you tell her to ring me as soon as she’s back. I’m very surprised she never rang me.’

  They turned and walked back down the garden path, heads bent, muttering to one another. He shut the door and walked back into the hallway. He felt ill and barely made it to the sofa. He needed to think about what to do next. This murder business was exhausting. It wouldn’t be long before the nosey old hags came back wanting to speak to his mother. He would only be able to put them off for a short time. He buried his head into his shaking hands.

  Mike had pulled away from the tiny window, shocked by what he had just seen, but not that shocked he didn’t realise he should be running as far away as possible. She had seen him but he didn’t know if she had recognised him it had been so brief. He was now sitting on a huge rock at the back of that creepy old house panting like an old man, he was so unfit. He hoped that they didn’t come looking for him. He was disgusted with her but at the same time as horny as hell. She had never done anything like that with him. He was angry with them both and decided he would kill him, whoever he was, but that was probably a shite idea, he must be a copper but there was no uniform on the floor so if he walked around in normal clothes then he must know how to handle himself because all the other pussies wore stab vests.

  Mike walked into the woods. He didn’t know what to do and now he had seen his wife about to have sex with a total stranger he wanted her more than anything. He jumped when a man swinging a dog lead came around from the side of the house. The man whistled a couple of times.

  ‘Lost your dog, mate?’

  The man nodded. ‘Every time I bring it up here it does a disappearing act.’

  ‘Well, sorry to state the obvious, but why do you let it off the lead then?’

  ‘Because it won’t do its business while it’s on the lead; likes a bit of freedom. I’ve a good mind to leave it but the wife would kill me if I went home without it.’

  Mike sighed. ‘Women, you can’t live with them and you can’t live without them.’

  The stranger agreed and held out his hand. ‘Henry.’

  Mike grasped it and shook it up and down. ‘Mike. Fed up and crapped on by my cheating wife.’

  ‘Oh that’s really bad. How do you know she’s cheating?’

  Mike nodded in the direction of the farm. ‘Because she’s staying over there and I just caught her at it with some bloke.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that. It’s much worse than losing the dog. Although, to be honest, if it was my wife I’d be relieved she was going to make some other poor sod’s life a misery. I think I’d shake his hand and wish him good luck.’

  Mike smiled. It felt good to have someone to talk to. No need to tell his new friend that he’d knocked her senseless and almost killed her not long ago. ‘I can help you look for your dog if you want.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you but I have an even better idea: if we don’t find it we could go to the pub and get drunk, drown our sorrows.’

  ‘Sounds like a perfect plan to me.’

  They walked off into the woods looking for a nonexistent dog.

  Chapter 29

  Will came back inside. ‘I couldn’t see anyone. Are you sure you saw a face, it wasn’t a shadow or something?’

  She shook her head. It could have been a figment of her imagination or it could have been one of her newfound ghostly friends that seemed to keep appearing. ‘It could have been. Maybe the excitement got too much for me.’ She winked at him but the moment was lost.

  ‘I’m sorry but I should really go. It’s not that I’m rushing to get away I just need to be there for the briefing.’

  ‘It’s fine. I know you do, Will. Someone has to put a stop to what’s going on.’ Annie was secretly relieved they hadn’t managed to go any further. She knew she should be concentrating on herself and forgetting about men but she couldn’t help wondering if she would ever get the chance to make love to him or whether fate would throw something in their way every time it got close. ‘Come back when you get a chance. I’m missing you already.’

  He ran his fingers through his hair then pulled her close and kissed her. She pushed him away.

  ‘Get to work, Sergeant Ashworth. You’re going to be late and I’ll still be here when you finish, waiting for you.’ She pushed him towards the door. ‘Go and do some detecting.’

  ‘Yes, boss. Don’t go anywhere and keep the doors locked.’

  She watched him jog over to his car and sighed. She was going to make the most of this even if it didn’t last long. She deserved a little bit of happiness.

  In the distance through the trees she saw two men. From behind one of them looked like Mike and she wondered if it was his face that had scared her minutes ago. She shut the door, locking it behind her. She was going to have a long soak in a hot bubble bath.

  Henry was trying his best to keep calm but he was finding it hard. The woman at the farm was getting more exciting every day. He wasn’t too keen on the thought of her having sex with the man, it tarnished his fantasy a bit. She had looked so helpless and innocent when all this time she had been the devil in disguise, trying to lead him astray. He smirked. No, that was definitely him and he was about to unleash all manner of hell.

  After
ten minutes of fruitless searching he turned to Mike who, underneath all the aftershave, smelt of stale alcohol. Henry sensed that he could be a big problem and one that needed taking care of. If he was hanging around it would spoil all of Henry’s plans. What he needed to do was to dispose of him first. He had never killed a man before and Mike was a big guy but he was pretty sure that if he got him drunk enough he would be able to take him out.

  ‘Come on, this is a complete waste of time. Let’s go to the pub.’

  ‘I bet your dog is sitting outside your house wagging its tail by now anyway.’

  Henry nodded in agreement and they headed off towards the pub a mile down the road.

  Annie needed to know what had happened to Alice: when had she died and had she got to spend the rest of her life with Alfie? She had an urge to go to the cemetery and look for her grave. Annie hoped that she had finally been reunited with Alfie and lived to a ripe old age. She got dressed and shouted for Tess. If she couldn’t walk around the woods she would take her to the cemetery with her.

  It didn’t take long to get there. She drove slowly past the crematorium from which a small number of people were trickling out, all wearing black and sniffling into handkerchiefs. She looked away feeling guilty as if she had turned up to a wake wearing a low cut, bright red dress. She continued driving to where the really old graves were at the far end. The original chapel still stood at this end of the cemetery. It had high metal fencing around the outside but it was in an even worse state of disrepair than the mansion. An image of her wearing the most beautiful lace wedding dress flashed in front of her. She inhaled the sweet cloying smell of scented flowers which momentarily made her dizzy.

  She stopped the car by a huge stone monument of an angel. She looked around at the others; this was the biggest one she could see. The smell disappeared when she got out of the car. Annie walked towards the seven-foot angel, which towered above the other graves in this part of the cemetery. It would have been beautiful once. Now it was covered in dark green moss and one of its wings was cracked and chipped. The angel was holding out its hands, beckoning Annie towards it. As she got closer a great feeling of sadness overwhelmed her. She blinked back tears as she read the inscription:

  Here lies the blessed body of Alice Heaton. Wife of Edward reunited with her son, James. Missed by all.

  It was too much. Annie began to cry. Poor Alice had lost her son and she can’t have made a new life with Alfie because, according to this, she was still married to Edward when she died. The grave was overgrown with no one to care for it. Annie felt devastated for the woman she had never met. Alice had stopped an evil killer on her own, she should be a local hero not some long forgotten person that nobody has ever heard of. She would come back and clean the grave and lay some fresh flowers on it. Annie would pay Alice the respect that she deserved. She bowed her head and said what she hoped was an acceptable prayer.

  A cold hand squeezed her shoulder and she turned expecting to see someone standing behind her: the place was deserted. She lifted her hand placing it on top of the invisible one. The rain began to fall. It was time to go home and lockdown.

  As she drove to the exit she glanced in the rear view mirror and saw a white figure disappear behind the monument. She needed to speak to Derek and try to find out what Alice so desperately wanted from her. She was glad that she wasn’t mentally ill or brain-damaged but, then again, she wasn’t sure if she liked this being able to see dead people stuff on top of everything else she had going on at the moment.

  The pub was empty, which made Henry a very happy man: the fewer people that saw him and Mike together the better. The barmaid was perched on a bar stool reading a magazine. She blew a huge bubble with her chewing gum and Henry frowned, he coughed.

  ‘Yeah, what can I get you?’ He looked to Mike who shrugged. He had sat on a stool at a table in the corner. ‘Two pints of lager please.’

  The barmaid still didn’t look at Henry. She stood up, picked up two pint glasses and began pouring first one and then the other. He began drumming his fingers against the wooden bar. If there was one thing that really wound him up it was rudeness and she was just about the rudest person he had ever met.

  She turned to look at him. ‘Five pounds sixty please.’

  He passed over a ten-pound note and held his hand out for his change. If she thought for one minute he was giving her a tip she could think again. He glared at her. Did she just shiver? He hoped she had. As he walked towards Mike she picked up the phone and began whispering to whoever was on the other end.

  Chapter 30

  Matt finished his second post mortem of the day and stripped his blood covered gloves off and dropped them into the special waste bin; everyone else had gone for lunch. It seemed as if the whole town was dying. He had come into work this morning to three more bodies. His predecessor had never been one to rush anything, sometimes making relatives wait days before processing their loved ones. Matt didn’t agree with that. The quicker he worked the faster the families could get the funeral arrangements sorted out. He had made a promise to himself when he took over as head pathologist for the South Lakes area that he would process his clients quickly and as professionally as the circumstances allowed. Six months ago he had applied to go on the register of forensic pathologists for the Home Office because sometimes it took days before one would be available to come down from the cities to carry out this work. It added to his caseload but he loved his job and was a workaholic.

  He stared at the bank of fridges thinking about Emma Harvey. She wouldn’t be out of here as fast as he would have liked. After stripping off his scrubs he made his way to the office. He had a mini fridge in there especially for his cans of diet Vimto and his cheese and onion sarnies. Taking out the plastic Chinese carton containing his sandwiches and a can of pop he sat down at his desk and began rifling through the pile of post on his desk, weeding out the junk mail from the ones that actually bore some importance.

  His computer pinged and he opened up his emails. Giving them a cursory glance he leant forward: the address on the latest one was from a colleague who worked at the newly formed Institute for Forensic Science. The wound on Emma’s neck had particles of blood and DNA along the cut and they were showing as a match for Jenna White’s. He read further down the report, which said there were minute traces of dried blood found inside the wound. These had been run through the database. They were so old and deteriorated there was no match. His colleague hazarded a guess that those traces of blood were pre-Chernobyl, which meant that the sample had been somewhere that hadn’t been exposed to any of the particles which could be found almost everywhere after the nuclear plant had a catastrophic accident in 1986 and they were probably a whole lot older than that. Matt scratched his head and stuffed the rest of his sandwich into his mouth. He put his feet on the desk and began to think about the possibilities of what it meant.

  As Will arrived at the station he had a hunch that today was the day things were going to get better. Hopefully they would find some link which would help to locate Jenna. He walked past the community office to a lot of high pitched squealing and laughter. Turning around he walked in to see what was happening.

  ‘Now then, ladies, do you know that this is a place of work and it’s against staff rules to be happy while carrying out your duties?’

  Four faces smiled back at him. ‘Morning, Will.’

  ‘Come on then, what has tickled you lot so early in the morning?’

  Sally stood up and walked over to switch the kettle on. ‘It’s disgusting, you wouldn’t want to know, I didn’t want to.’

  He watched her open the fridge and begin to make him a coffee and for the first time ever he felt bad.

  ‘Right then, you go and sit down I’m going to make you all the best coffee you’ve ever had.’

  Liz turned to look at him. ‘Are you feeling OK, Will? Did you hit your head on the way in?’

  He winked at her. ‘Cheeky. I’ll be back in a minute; don’t go anywhere
.’ He went off to his office to get the ground coffee and unused cafetière out of his bottom drawer. It was his Secret Santa gift last Christmas. He strode back around to the community office.

  Sally looked at him. ‘We were talking about our exciting sex lives, well, more the lack of it. Anyway why are you in such a good mood? Are you after something because we did loads of house to house for you yesterday? It took me twenty minutes to get the cow shit off my boots when I got home.’

  Will gasped and clutched at his heart doing his best to look hurt. ‘Why don’t you just stick the knife right in, go on push it harder? Do you lot honestly think I’m only nice when I want something?’

  They all looked at each other and nodded.

  He shook his head as he spooned the last of the coffee into the pot. ‘I’m hurt. You know how much I adore you all and I never agree with anyone who gives you a hard time.’

  Sally wandered over and squeezed his arm. ‘Sorry, Will, we know you do and we love you really.’

  He squeezed her arm back. ‘I forgive you.’

  He was the first one in the CID office and the pictures of Jenna and Emma both stared back at him from the whiteboard: Jenna, still breathing and full of life; Emma’s lifeless white face, her lips tinged blue and a huge gash across her throat, her eyes glazed over. I promise I’m going to catch him. He walked closer to see if anything new had been added to the lists below each girl. The phone began ringing but he didn’t answer it, then it stopped and started again.

  ‘Good morning. CID. Will Ashworth speaking.’

  The voice on the other end paused. ‘Good morning, Detective Sergeant. It’s Andrew Marshall. I’m taking over as the DCI and I’ve been reviewing our two cases. I just wanted to catch up with you and see how it’s going?’