by Amy Cross
“Absolutely,” Lisa replied, before turning to the husband, who seemed to be waiting meekly for permission to speak.
“He'll have the steak,” the woman added. “Medium-rare. He always has steak.”
“Steak, please,” the man mumbled. “Thank you.”
By the time she got back to the serving station thirty seconds later, having been subjected to several more snide comments, Lisa was just glad to get a moment's peace. She was only two hours into her first shift at the restaurant, and she'd barely had time to draw breath. As she entered table eight's order into the system, she felt someone nudging her shoulder.
“Told you,” Donna said as she slipped past on her way to the kitchen. “Total bitch.”
“I'm sure she's just having a bad day,” Lisa replied, watching as Donna headed through the door. Glancing back across the restaurant, however, she spotted the woman at table eight apparently chastising her daughter once again. For a moment, Lisa couldn't help but feel sorry for the little girl, but slowly she began to feel a creeping sensation at the edge of her vision, as if once again someone was trying to get her attention.
She turned and looked at the other tables, but at each of them the diners seemed to be getting along just fine. She continued to search the sea of faces, more certain than ever that someone somewhere was staring at her. The more she tried to tell herself that she was wrong, the more she felt the sensation growing, until she forced herself to turn away and carry on with the job of entering table eight's order. As she tried to focus on the terminal screen, however, she felt a ruffling sensation on the back of her neck, as if all the hairs were standing up.
Finally, unable to bear it a moment longer, she turned and looked across the restaurant again. Still no-one was looking at her, although after a few seconds she realized she'd been subconsciously avoiding looking at table nine. Swallowing hard, she turned to the table and looked at the empty chair, but of course there was still no sign of anyone. The curious sensation lingered, though, and she still felt as if someone somewhere in the room was definitely trying to attract her attention. It was almost as if...
Feeling a vibration in her pocket, she slipped her phone out and saw yet another message from her mother. Usually a very calm and reserved woman, her mother had seemed so panicky about Lisa's new job at the restaurant. Sighing, she began to type a quick reply, telling her to stop worrying.
“You stupid little monster!” the haughty woman suddenly yelled at her daughter, causing Lisa and everyone else in the restaurant to turn and look over at table eight. A fraction of a second later, there was the sound of the woman smacking her child's face. “What the hell have you done now?”
Three
“What is it?” Lisa asked, hurrying past the other tables until she reached table eight, where the little girl sat gently sobbing while her mother leaned down to look at the legs of the chairs. “What's wrong?”
Hearing the woman muttering something, Lisa crouched down and took a look under the table. After a moment, she spotted a puddle on the wooden floor, and then she saw some kind of liquid dribbling down the legs of the little girl's chair.
A moment later, she realized she could smell pee.
“Oh Jesus fucking Christ,” the woman sighed, her voice filled with venom as she leaned forward and held a hand up to hide her face from the other diners, who were gradually turning back to one another. “Elizabeth, what is wrong with you? We bring you to a semi-decent restaurant and you go and piss your pants? I thought you'd stopped all of that after you saw the fucking psychologist?”
Looking up, Lisa saw that the little girl was red-faced and sobbing, with tears streaming down her face.
“I can't believe this child,” the woman continued. “What did I do to deserve a daughter who can't even control her fucking bladder?”
Glancing at the husband, Lisa saw that he seemed too shocked to do anything.
“It's fine,” she said, getting to her feet and forcing a smile. “Accidents happen and -”
“It is not fine!” the woman hissed, still hiding her face as diners at the other tables glanced over. “This is humiliating, for Christ's sake!”
“I'll clean it all up,” Lisa told her, glancing down at the sobbing child, “and I think we can find a change of clothes.” When neither of the girl's parents said anything, Lisa reached down and put her hand on the child's shoulder. “How about you come with me,” she asked, smiling in an attempt to make the girl cheer up a little, “and we'll get everything clean and sorted? It'll be like this never happened, I promise.”
“And bring me a gin and tonic while you're at it,” the woman snapped. “Oh God, why me? I'm a good mother, why does this always happen to me? Why can't I have a child who behaves?”
“We'll straighten this all out,” Lisa replied, “and I'll get a change of clothes for your daughter.”
“Feel free to keep her,” the woman muttered. “God, I'm sick of this!”
“Come on,” Lisa said, still smiling as she took the little girl's hand. “It's okay. I'm just going to clean you up. There's no need to be scared.”
***
“Don't worry,” Lisa said as she pulled a fresh set of black trousers from the closet and turned to Elizabeth, who was standing and still sobbing in the storeroom behind the kitchen. “We all have little accidents from time to time. There's no need to feel embarrassed or sad, okay?”
When the little girl failed to respond, Lisa stepped over and crouched down in front of her.
“How old are you?” she asked.
She waited, but tears were streaming down the girl's red, flustered face.
“Your name's Elizabeth, right?” she continued. “How old are you, Elizabeth? Let me guess, you're... Ten? Eleven?
Finally the girl lifted her face slightly and looked at her.
“Nine,” she said timidly, her voice trembling with shock.
“Nine, huh?” Lisa smiled. “I remember when I was nine, I still had little accidents sometimes. It's really not that big of a deal. I once wet myself at school when I was... Oh, eleven, something like that. I thought it was the end of the world, I thought no-one would ever talk to me again. But do you know what? It was fine. These things don't really matter, not in the long run.”
“I embarrassed Mummy.”
“Well, don't worry about that,” Lisa continued, refraining from telling the girl what she really thought about her mother. “Listen, these trousers are totally the wrong size for you, but I think we can make them fit. I'll cut the bottoms off the legs, and I'll find something for you to use as a belt, and you'll be right as rain in no time. You'll look funny, but there's nothing wrong with looking funny, is there?” She waited for a reply, for perhaps even the first trace of a smile, but the girl was still weeping. “You mustn't worry about what your mother said,” she added. “I'm sure she's just stressed. She didn't mean any of it.”
“Did you see her?” Elizabeth asked.
“Your mother?” Lisa nodded. “Don't worry, I asked my friend to take her a gin and tonic.”
“Not Mummy,” Elizabeth continued, sniffing back tears. “The other woman.”
“Which other woman would that be?”
Heading back to the closet, Lisa began to search for a smaller pair of trousers.
“The woman...” Elizabeth paused, her eyes filled with fear. “The woman at the next table, in the corner.”
“I don't think there's -” Stopping suddenly, Lisa realized that the little girl could only mean the empty table nine. “I don't think there's anyone at that table, sweetheart,” she said cautiously, turning to look back over at her. “Maybe you mean one of the other tables?”
“The woman at the next table looked at me,” Elizabeth replied, sniffing back more tears. “I didn't want her to, but she did. She looked right at me until...” She paused, her bottom lip trembling slightly. “I haven't had an accident for ages, I didn't think it'd happen again, but when that woman looked at me...”
Her vo
ice trailed off.
“When you said you saw a woman at the table in the corner,” Lisa said after a moment, grabbing some more tissues and heading back over to her, “are you sure you don't mean the next table along from that? The one with, I think it's four women sitting together?”
Elizabeth shook her head.
Lisa crouched down and wiped some more tears from the girl's face. “Or the one along from that? The one by the big plant in the round pot?”
“I didn't actually see the woman at the table,” Elizabeth replied cautiously. “I just saw her reflection in the mirror.”
Lisa felt a shiver pass through her chest. “I'm really not sure that's possible, sweetheart.”
“She was wearing a black dress,” Elizabeth continued, “and a black hat, and a black veil. She wasn't eating anything. She was just sitting there, right in the corner, and then...”
Lisa waited for her to continue.
“And then what?” she asked finally.
She waited, but the girl didn't reply. The only sound came from the clanking of pots and pans in the kitchen.
“Tell me what you saw,” Lisa continued. “I won't be mad. Just tell me.”
“When her reflection looked at me,” Elizabeth replied cautiously, her voice cracking a little as if she was once again on the verge of tears, “and I saw her face through the black veil...”
The girl's voice trailed off.
“What did you see?” Lisa asked.
Fresh tears were welling in Elizabeth's eyes.
“She looked really angry,” she whimpered finally. “She looked crosser than Mummy's ever been.”
“What was her face like?”
The girl's bottom lip started trembling more than ever.
“Tell me what her face was like,” Lisa continued. “It can't have been that scary, can it? Just describe it to me.”
Elizabeth shook her head.
“Why not?”
She waited, but fresh tears were rolling down the girl's cheeks.
“Is it too scary?” Lisa asked.
Elizabeth nodded.
Lisa paused, trying to work out what the girl had really seen. The most likely option, she figured, was that the supposed 'reflection' had actually been someone standing in the street outside the restaurant. After a moment, however, she heard a spattering sound from below, and she looked down just in time to see that the girl was soiling herself again.
“I'm sorry!” Elizabeth sobbed, choking back tears. “I'm really sorry!”
“It's okay,” Lisa replied, trying to stay calm. “You've just seen something that upset you, that's all.”
“She was looking at you,” Elizabeth said after a moment.
Lisa reached up with a tissue to dab the girl's eyes, before pausing. “I'm sorry? What was that?”
“The woman at the next table,” Elizabeth continued, still sniffing back tears. “Every time you came near, I could tell she was looking straight at you. And that was when she seemed angriest.”
Four
Slipping through the swing-door that led into the kitchen, Lisa finally stopped and leaned back against the wall, trying to regather her composure. Having finished cleaning Elizabeth up and returned her to table eight, she'd spent a few more minutes tidying the store-room, and now she was getting ready to head back out to the main part of the restaurant.
She just needed a moment to gather her thoughts, and to get Elizabeth's weird claims out of her mind. Feeling another vibration in her pocket, she realized her mother was still fussing, but this time she ignored the message. She figured her mother would just have to learn not to worry so much.
“Tough night?”
Turning, she saw Clyde, one of the kitchen assistants, smiling at her as he carried an empty rack over to the pile in the corner.
“I'm fine,” she replied, once again forcing a smile. “It's nothing. I should get back out there.”
“I overheard that windbag screeching out there,” he continued, setting the rack down and then wiping his hands on the front of his already-stained apron. “I hate to say it, but you're gonna have to get used to people like that if you wanna work in the service industry. We get at least one full-on asshole every night, although to be fair she was kinda going overboard. Even as ass-wipes go, she seemed top-drawer.”
“I really should get back to work,” she said again, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear as she turned back to the door. “I have to get back to my covers.”
“Did no-one tell you about table nine?”
She stopped for a moment, with her hand on the door, before glancing at him. She knew she should just keep going, but at the same time his question had stirred a few doubts in her mind. “What about it?”
“Why it's always left empty,” he continued, still wiping his hands on his apron as he took a step closer. “I've been working here almost two years now, and I've never seen anyone sit at that table. No matter how busy the place gets, no matter how rammed we are, table nine just sits there in the corner by the window, all laid up but completely untouched.”
Stopping next to her, he looked out through the small window in the door. Lisa quickly joined him, and they both stared for a moment at the busy restaurant. Sure enough, every other table was packed, with customers having booked weeks in advance to eat at one of the town's most popular establishments. Croussiard's was known throughout England as a high-end restaurant serving a fusion of traditional British and French cuisine, and the low-lit, sleek, dark building catered to diners who never thought twice about paying several hundred pounds for a good meal. Reservations were hard to come by, especially following a glowing review in the nationals a few weeks earlier, and the place was always busy, and yet...
And yet in the far corner, tucked away in the shadows next to a window, table nine stood defiantly, conspicuously empty.
“What's wrong with it?” Lisa asked, turning to Clyde.
A faint smile crossed his lips.
“What?” she asked, before realizing he was probably just trying to trick her on her first night. “Does it wobble or something? Ants?” She waited a moment. “Never mind, I should -”
“It's haunted.”
She frowned. “I'm sorry?”
“That's what they say, anyway,” he continued, glancing at her. “The way I heard it is that a long time ago, like twenty years back or more, some woman killed herself during a busy evening, right there at table nine. Apparently she was well-known around the place, she used to come once a week with her fiance and table nine was, like, their special romantic spot, the one they always asked for. You know, all that soppy, lovey-dovey stuff.”
He paused, grinning, before they both turned to look back out at the table.
“And then,” he went on, with a conspiratorial tone creeping into his voice, “one night she showed up alone, asking for the same table. Wearing all black this time, they reckon, and acting just a little off. She ordered her usual, and the waitress apparently told the cops later that she could tell something wasn't quite right. Turns out she was heart-broken over being dumped. She sounds well emo, if you ask me. And then a few minutes later, according to the story, the woman took out a little bottle from her pocket and gunned down a home-brew of rat poison and bleach, right there at table nine.”
“That...” Lisa paused for a moment, staring at the empty table. “That can't be... You're making that up.”
“You reckon?” he asked with a faint smile. “The whole thing's easy enough to check. That part, anyway. Just look it up online. Vivian Carradine, her name was. A whole restaurant full of diners heard her suddenly start screaming as the bleach and poison burned through her stomach. That's a fact, that's not the part that's difficult to prove. It's what happened next that's a little more... open to interpretation. If you're that way inclined, anyway.”
“What happened next?” she asked, even though she felt sure he was making the whole thing up.
“The restaurant closed down, for starters,” he
explained, as they continued to watch the table. “No-one wanted to eat here anymore, not after some woman had started spewing blood all over the place. That's when Annette and John bought the previous owners out, did it all up, changed the name and re-opened it as Croussiard's. I heard they got the place well cheap, on account of no-one else wanting to touch it with a ten-foot pole. Took 'em a while to make people forget what had happened, but eventually they turned the place into a success by going all high-end and fancy.” He sniffed. “It's all good now, so long as they remember not to ever let anyone sit at table nine. I mean, it's not like Annette's a superstitious woman, not by any means, but sometimes you just have to accept that you shouldn't go poking something into you don't understand. And you don't ever, ever seat anyone at table nine.”
Lisa continued to watch the table for a moment, before turning to him. She wanted to laugh, to tell him she wasn't falling for his dumb story, but deep down she felt a niggling sense of doubt.
“Have... things happened at that table?” she asked cautiously.
“Like what?”
“I don't know.” She paused, thinking back to Elizabeth's story about seeing a woman's reflection in the window. “You're the one who claims to know about it.”
“Ghosts and bumps in the night?” he asked with a faint smile.
“Has anything happened there or not?”
He stared at her for a moment, before turning to look at the table again.
“Sometimes people reckon they've seen things,” he explained. “Just little flashes. A brief reflection of a face in the window, a figure only seen out the corner of their eye. A nagging sense of a presence. Not me, I've never seen a damn thing, but...” He paused for a moment, still staring at the table in the far corner. “Maybe that's 'cause I've never been stupid enough to sit there.”
“But other people have?”
He smiled. “For dares. Bets. After work stuff, you know? When the restaurant's shut and everyone's tired, and the boss isn't around.”
