“I want you to meet some people,” I said, stepping back and indicating Allan. “You remember Allan, the drummer from Ghost Symphony.”
“How could I forget?” said Bianca, reaching in to peck Allan on both cheeks. “Nice to see you again, Allan. I’m sorry about your loss.”
“And this is my friend Cindy Lawler, from London, and her boyfriend, Damon Sputnik. Bianca is a tattoo artist. She owns Resurrection Ink, just on the corner.”
“Oh, we saw your place as we were coming in. The dragon in the window is just amazing.” gushed Cindy. “Damon is into tattoos, aren’t you, baby? He’s thinking of getting something to commemorate his time here in England. I suggested he get a portrait of the Queen, but he doesn’t seem so keen.”
Damon nodded stoically.
“Well, if you’re interested you should come down to the shop and see some of my work,” said Bianca. “I do a lot of portrait work, so you’d be in luck if you wanted Her Highness to grace your body.”
While they chatted, I glanced around the growing crowd. There were some incredible outfits around. There were recreations of monsters and mythological figures, exact replicas of outfits the band members or their models wore in music videos, elaborate Victorian and Edwardian mourning attire. I recognised a few faces from their profile pictures on the Ghost Symphony forum. A few of the ladies gazed admiringly at my gown. Even a couple of the guys seemed to be checking me out. I grinned, feeling proud that I fitted in, and then wiped the grin off my face immediately. That’s in bad taste, Elinor. This is a funeral.
A group of girls in white makeup and skin-tight latex outfits came up and asked for Allan’s autograph. Two of them glared at me while the third fished a CD sleeve and pen out of her cleavage.
My stomach flip-flopped again. I felt nervous, agitated. There was something wrong, but I couldn’t quite place what it was. I scanned the crowd again, hoping for some clue to the origin of this bad feeling. But there was nothing amiss. The funeral was going perfectly so far ...
Holy shit.
My hand flew to my mouth. The movement was involuntary, caused by total and utter surprise. I leaned backward and followed the figure with my eyes as she moved through the crowd. She was wearing a simple, almost shapeless black dress, an elaborate feathered headdress, and a ring of skulls like a crown around her forehead. But that face … it was a face I’d recognise anywhere.
It was Helen Manning.
Eric
I watched from the window as Elinor moved toward her seat, her arm looped through Allan’s as he steered her through the crowd. The train of her dress fanned out around her, as if she were a gothic bride being escorted on to the dance floor by her betrothed. She smiled up at Allan, her hair fanning her heart-shaped face. She wasn’t wearing her glasses, and her eyes sparkled with newly released life. Jealously stabbed at my stomach. I should be the one on her arm, not him.
Elinor looked beautiful, radiant. She made every woman in the place seem like a dog in comparison. But she was lost to me, and that made it even more painful to look at her.
I wasn’t really being fair to Allan, who had been a good friend to me and did look seriously nervous and cut up about my death. But I couldn’t help it, every time I looked at him, this hard ball of rage bounced around in my stomach.
He doesn’t know she’s your girl, I reminded myself. But I was dead. I wanted to hold a grudge. Who was going to stop me?
I crouched by the window, my new violin resting against my knee, its weight reassuring as it stayed upright, not falling through my skin as it had done so many other times since Elinor had brought it for me. I was staying solid for longer periods of time now.
I knew I shouldn’t watch the funeral. It was going to be difficult to see how others saw me in life, to know I could never go back to that world. But I had a strange, nervous feeling about it, a sense of foreboding that had nothing to do with seeing my own coffin. My ghosty sense was tingling. Something bad was going to happen.
I pressed my face up against the window, but I could hardly see or hear anything through the old, smudged glass. I needed to open the window.
I stretched out my fingers across the glass, feeling the coolness of it against my palm. Good. I was still solid. I undid the catch and pushed at the window, but it was as if I were pushing against a solid wall. It wouldn’t budge. Ah, I understood. It was the barrier to the outside of the house. I couldn’t move any further.
I found an old, heavy wooden hat stand behind a box of books. Placing the base against the window, I pushed with all my strength. The window popped open. Now I could see and hear what was going on down there.
Elinor and Allan were now sitting in the VIP seats. I saw many other people I recognised—musicians I’d collaborated with, models and actresses I’d dated, Heather my manager who secretly hated me, important executives from my label ... anybody who was anybody was here. There was Bianca, the tattoo artist from high school who’d been kind to me whenever I came back to Crookshollow. And there—standing on the stage with a couple of old women who were friendly with my mother—was Duncan, looking self-satisfied in his perfectly tailored suit as he surveyed the gathering crowd.
Prick, I thought, as I watched him. My mother trusted him … hell, I trusted him. And he’d been stealing from her.
Once everyone was seated and the press were snapping away madly, the funeral started in earnest. A post-punk band called Switchblade Sawdust who’ve opened for us many times on our UK tours played a funeral dirge, while two coffins were wheeled up to the front by the Ghost Symphony backstage crew, all burly men straining to fit inside their sombre black suits.
I laughed bitterly as I watched that casket make its way slowly up the aisle. Was there any moment more goth than watching your own funeral unfold before you? I literally had a bird’s eye view of my own death’s knell as my coffin was arranged next to Mother’s at the front of the stage.
I gulped. My coffin. It was a deep black, draped with red ribbons and a cascading arrangement of red roses. My mother’s roses were white. Duncan really had pulled out all the stops. Thankfully, both caskets were closed. I guessed after being in a car accident, my body wasn’t quite up to public display.
“Goodbye, Mother,” I whispered as my eyes focused on her casket. She’d been a hard woman, and I hadn’t always liked her. In fact, there were times in my life when I’d hated her. But she did what she thought was best, and she made her own luck, I always admired that. I was glad that at least a few of the hundreds of people who’d bought tickets for the funeral were friends of hers.
First, Duncan got up to give a short speech. He glossed over me and my career, and focused solely on my mother. Tears spilled from his eyes as he described her life after my father left, and how she’d built her fortune from nothing but hard work and intelligence, and how she’d kept up the old house, until the dementia finally claimed her.
I looked back at Elinor. She was sitting next to Allan, her long fingers folded neatly in her lap, her eyes focused on Duncan. I could see a white tissue balled up in her fist, and occasionally she would dab at her eyes with it. What is she thinking right now? Is the crying because of me? Is she thinking about me, or are her tears because of all that paperwork she could be doing instead of sitting there in that pretty dress ...
Wait a second.
My eyes focused on the figure sitting directly behind Elinor. Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have noticed her, especially since Elinor’s beauty outshone her in every way. But now her lank blonde hair, turned-up nose and sallow skin were forever emblazoned on my memory.
It was Helen Manning. My killer was sitting right behind Elinor. My stomach twisted. This is it. This is what you were afraid would happen. I had to do something, but what? I couldn’t even leave the house …
Do what exactly? Call the police? With what evidence, exactly? You can’t do anything, and you shouldn’t try. Elinor doesn’t want to see or speak to you, and you should respect that. Just stay here and
watch, don’t take your eyes off of her, maybe everything will be OK.
What else could I do? I sat and I watched as my killer and the woman I loved shared the same oxygen. And I waited for something to happen.
Elinor
What is she doing here? Did she come to gloat over the corpse of her victim? How fucked up is that?
I snuck another glance over my shoulder. I definitely wasn’t mistaken. Eric’s killer was sitting right behind me, staring toward the front of the stage with tear-stained eyes while two musician friends of Eric’s talked about his career. No matter how I felt about Eric, I couldn’t just let a murderer sit there plain as day without doing something. Besides, if she was part of the drug plot, then she was a bad seed, anyway. Who knew what else she might do, or who else she might hurt?
But what to do? With all these cameras snapping away, I couldn’t confront her here, in the audience. I had to get her away, but how ...
“Hand me the flask,” I whispered to Allan, a crazy idea forming in my mind.
“Not now,” he whispered back, his eyes still pinned to the front of the room. “All those reporters are watching.”
“I’m not going to embarrass you any more than I already have. Please hand it to me. It’s important.”
Sighing, Allan lifted the hem of his shirt, and pulled the flask from its secret pocket in the back of his belt. Without averting his gaze from the stage, he pushed the flask into my hand.
“Booze hag,” he mouthed at me. I gave him the thumbs up in return. Unscrewing the lid, I rolled my head to the side, opening my mouth as if I intended to drink. And then I flung the flask over my shoulder, aiming as best I could for Helen’s lap.
“What are you doing?” A thin, high-pitched voice behind me squeaked. “You idiot! You’ve spilt that stuff all over me!”
Bingo.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” I spun around, my face a picture of mock concern. I had my first good look at Helen Manning in all her glory. She had made a great effort with her outfit and her makeup was bold and colourful, her lips outlined with a deep, blood-red. The dress she wore could hardly be called “sombre”. Now that I was close up I could see it had a pattern of jaunty dancing skeletons, and she had articulated skeletons dangling from her ears and around her neck, to go with that silly skull crown she wore. Tasteful. The front of her dress was now sopping wet, the liquid smudged across the skeletons. She reeked of scotch. I dabbed at the stain on her breast with my snotty handkerchief, but that only smudged it worse.
“Stop doing that! This is dry clean only,” Helen moaned, flinging up her hands. All around us, people were turning their heads to stare. I had to move on to phase two of my plan, stat.
“I’m ever so sorry.” I said sweetly. “Let me take you to the bathroom. I bet I can fix this.”
“But I’ll miss the funeral! Besides, we’re not allowed in the house. The only toilets out here look like they’ve been imported directly from Glastonbury without being cleaned.” Helen screwed up her face.
“Relax.” I grinned my most trustworthy smile. “I’m Alice Marshell’s lawyer. I have the keys to the house. And besides, Eric’s eulogies aren’t for a while yet. You won’t miss anything, I promise.”
“You mean …” Helen’s eyes gleamed. “I’d get to see inside Eric’s house?”
“Of course. I mean, it’s the least I could do after ruining your dress.” I leaned closer and whispered in her ear. “If you like, I could even show you the room he slept in as a child. His mother kept it just the way he left it.”
“Let’s go.” For someone who’d just been drenched with scotch, Helen looked as if she was going to burst with joy. She scrambled out of her chair, practically running down the aisle toward the back porch. I gulped down my fear and sauntered after her, holding up the velvet rope with the DO NOT CROSS sign so she could duck under. I didn’t look up to the attic to see if Eric was watching. I was about to enter a deserted house, with a murderer. I needed all my wits about me.
Eric
Why is Elinor walking toward the house with Helen Manning?
I watched, my ghostly heart thundering against my chest, as Elinor turned around in her seat and talked to my murderer. And then she was standing up, and leading the villain through the crowd toward the house. They disappeared under the eaves as Elinor led Helen up onto the porch.
Is she insane? Doesn’t she know how dangerous it is to be alone with this woman? What is she thinking?
Of course, she isn’t thinking. Or, at least, she isn’t thinking of what’s important. That was Elinor’s problem. She was so busy trying to uncover the truth she didn’t think about her own safety. For an incredibly intelligent woman, she could be exceptionally thick sometimes.
All my hurt and anger at Elinor flew from my mind. I heard the back door open, and Elinor’s voice echoed through the hall. “—if you’ll just come this way, I’ll show you the bathroom and we can scrub that stain right out. I have a dress you can wear in the meantime. It’s upstairs in Eric’s bedroom. I can’t wait to show it to you.”
“Oh, that would be beyond amazing!” came a high-pitched, young-sounding voice. The voice of my murderer.
What is she doing? The violin dropped through my knee. I was back to being see-through again. Good. I raced toward the attic door, flew straight through it and down the stairs. I flew into the hall, but my body slammed against an invisible wall. I bounced back into the steps, my ears ringing. What is that?
I tried to pass over the threshold into the hall again, but again my hands came up against a wall of invisible resistance. It similar to the barrier that kept me inside the house. Was it shrinking? How was I going to help Elinor?
I inspected the area around the barrier, looking for a clue. When I looked down, I noticed someone had laid a path of white powder across the front of the stairwell. At first I thought maybe Elinor had dumped out the coke in my violin case, to make some kind of point, but when I bent down to inspect it closer, I discovered it was salt. I tried to touch the granules, but my hand was stopped mid-air.
Vaguely, I remembered a horror film I’d seen once where ghosts were unable to cross a line of salt. It looked as though Elinor had seen it, too. But, as angry as she had to be at me to attempt to trap me in the attic, I couldn’t let her be alone with Helen Manning. It was too dangerous.
I took a deep breath and dropped through the floor into the ground floor below, arriving in the rear hallway just behind Elinor and Helen. I glanced around, but couldn’t see any more salt trails back there. I followed them down the hall into the main downstairs bathroom. My mother had an old-fashioned laundry basket in the corner—tall and made of black wicker with a lid. It was the perfect hiding spot. While Elinor was fussing with something over the vanity unit, I flew inside the basket, so that only my eyes peeked through the slats. I didn’t want Elinor to know I was there, not yet.
“Here, let’s try this.” Elinor dabbed something on a cloth, then wiped the front of Helen’s chest. She was biting her lip in concentration. She looked so hot when she did that.
“Thank you so much,” Helen looked at herself in the mirror. She made a pouty model face, which, with her heavy makeup, just made her look like a clown appreciating a Greek tragedy. “I didn’t mean to snap at you before. It’s just that I spent my entire pay check on this dress and the ticket and I didn’t want—”
“Oh, it’s perfectly understandable. I’m just glad we’ve managed to salvage it. Did you know Eric?” Elinor asked her.
“Oh, yes.” Helen breathed. “We were friends. Close friends, if you know what I mean.” She raised one painted eyebrow in a suggestive way. I gagged out loud. Elinor turned toward the washing basket. I quickly snapped my head back inside. She didn’t say anything, so I don’t think she’d seen me.
“I’ve been a fan of Eric’s band since high school.” Helen was saying. “We write each other letters all the time. I’ve seen every show Ghost Symphony performed in London. I’m secretary of the official fa
n club and vice president of the Girls of Ghost calendar committee. I just couldn’t believe it when I heard Eric was dead. It felt like a part of me was dying, too. I just had to be here, although it’s hard.”
From inside the basket, all I could see was my mother’s flowery towels. My whole body seethed with rage. Here was this girl who had taken my life, lying through her teeth, pretending that we were close personal friends. What was Elinor doing? I dared to move my head forward until I could see through the basket into the bathroom beyond. Helen dabbed her eyes with a wad of toilet paper, and Elinor patted her on the shoulder.
“Oh, of course.” Elinor cooed. “There, there. I know how you feel. It’s been hard on all of us.”
“Oh, what do you know!” Helen sobbed. “I saw you with Allan. You looked pretty close, and he’s still alive. Why couldn’t it have been Allan who died, instead of Eric? Allan wasn’t even nice to me, and after everything I did with him …”
Her words gave me pause. That was an awfully weird thing for my killer to have said. Was she saying she was supposed to have killed Allan, isntead of me? What the actual fuck?
“I’m not really with Allan, we’re just friends. But while I’ve got you here,” said Elinor, “I was wondering about something.”
I watched as Elinor pulled something small out of her bra and smoothed it out on the vanity unit. The ticket stub. Elinor, no. You idiot. You can’t confront her like this, with no one watching. She’s a cold-hearted killer. If she realises you’re onto her, who knows what she will do!
I wanted to rush out of the basket right then and drag Elinor away. I wanted to push Helen’s head down the toilet and hold it there until she stopped struggling. But I was a ghost, what could I do? So I stayed where I was, my heart like a stone sinking through my chest.
The Man in Black: A Gothic Romance (Crookshollow Ghosts) Page 26
