When Darkness Falls - Six Paranormal Novels in One Boxed Set

by Shalini Boland

  He sat through thirty minutes of chit-chat with your mother. Of course he’s interested.

  “What are you going to do for your twenty-first?” The moor grass is spongy underfoot. I talk whilst quelling the desire to throw myself on the floor and bounce.

  That dark look comes back. “Nothing.”

  “At all? Don’t you want a party with your friends?” I ask.

  “I don’t have any friends.” He shoves his hands into his jeans.

  “You have co-workers—”

  “I don’t want to talk about my birthday,” he snaps.

  “Then you shouldn’t have brought it up at lunch,” I snap back.

  We stop walking and stare at each other. My heart pounds. I’m torn between wanting to fight with him and wanting to kiss him, to grab his dark hair and pull him into me. Seth is quiet. The slight flash of temper disappears as quickly as it came. His eyes go back to their lazy, half-closed status.

  “You’re right, I shouldn’t,” he admits. He lets out a short laugh. “I’m an idiot.”

  “Attention whore,” I say, a smile playing at my lips.

  “Right again.” He returns the smile and we both laugh together.

  With the moment past, we turn back to the moors and stroll along, side by side. I can’t figure him out. Sometimes he doesn’t seem interested at all, and yet he does things like turn up at the campsite and agree to lunch with my parents. He spent the entire time being polite and courteous, so surely he likes me? Yet he’s always holding something back. Maybe I’m reading too much into it.

  “So are you studying for A-Levels?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’m—”

  “No, wait, let me guess,” he says. We stop again and turn to each other, this time without the glaring. “English lit.”

  I roll my eyes. “That’s obvious.”

  “How?”

  “I commented on the book you were reading,” I say.

  He grins. “All right, I guess that one was pretty easy. Okay, but, I’m going to go out on a limb here, and guess that you’re studying four subjects.”

  “Go on…”

  “You’re a smart girl, and you’re contemplative… so… philosophy?”

  I shake my head.

  “Psychology?”

  I nod, with a small smile.

  “Maths.”

  I nod again. “How did you get that one?”

  He laughs. “That one, I guessed. History?”

  I shake my head.

  “Geography?”

  Another shake. “You’re crap at this.”

  “Wait, okay, I got it… biology?”

  “Damnit, yeah. How did you get that?”

  He licks his finger and presses it to his forehead imitating a sizzle. “Not just a pretty face, me.”

  “I guess not,” I reply.

  “So you’re a closet geek, then?” He says, a wicked grin spreading across his face.

  “I guess so.” I raise my eyebrows at him.

  “I like geeks. Especially the really smart ones.”

  It takes all the willpower I can muster to stop myself giggling like a little girl. I clear my throat and try to talk without betraying the effect his words, his mere presence, is having on every inch of my body. “You said you wanted to re-take your A-Levels?”

  “I messed up the first go.” He stares out at the long-stretching moorland, the wind rippling his hair into waves. “I got distracted, I guess. It didn’t seem important, then. I wanted to work with my hands.” He stares down at his upturned palms.

  “What will you study?” I ask.

  “Aren’t you going to guess?”

  “The first one is obvious.” I glance at the line of birds travelling up his arms, and the intricate pattern of leaves blending into his forearm. “Art. And English literature, because, you know, the book.”

  He nods.

  “And you’re a mechanic, so you must like engineering, so… physics?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Chemistry?”

  “Nope.”

  I think of the slight callouses on his fingers as he helped me over the fence, as well as the musical notes tattooed on his wrist. “Music.

  “Yes,” he replies. His eyebrows are raised in surprise. He rubs the stubble on his chin. “Not bad, Mary Hades. Not bad at all.”

  “They’re all so creative.”

  “But not too conducive to a proper career. You must think I’m a drifter,” he says. “I know your dad thinks that.”

  The expression on his face seems so resigned that I reach forward and touch him lightly on the arm. “No, I don’t think that at all.”

  He lifts a hand and tucks my hair behind my ear.

  How can one motion make all of your senses explode? His fingers smell like motor oil and grease, but I like it, I like the cracks in his skin and the calluses on his finger-tips.

  Where he touches me, electricity sparks. He leans forward and my heartbeat quickens.

  He’s going to kiss me.

  I half close my eyes, leaning into his space. His fingers travel through my hair, grazing the back of my skull with his fingertips. His thumb draws a line along my jawline at the same time, heightening the sensitivity of the nerve-endings under my skin. My body feels more alive than it ever has before. I’m jangling. I’m a shaken bell, full of energy and sound. The wind whispers by my ears, the cold turns every bare bit of skin into goosebumps. His face is so close to mine I smell a faint whiff of cigarettes and mint. Our lips brush.

  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 t
he 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…