by Keeley Smith
They sat in silence around the small mound of blazing wood. Stephen could feel his toes again so that was something. Another shocking development was the food, they were eating fried chicken wings. The zingy, crunchy breadcrumbs hit his taste buds making his mouth water. This combined with the heat of the white, juicy chicken was heaven. He’d gobbled three in quick succession and was now on his fourth. There seemed to be a never ending supply of the stuff.
Phillip grinned at Deyna as greasy juice leaked down his chin. Deyna was a little more lady like, she sat picking and ripping the meat with her fingers but he could see that she was holding back the urge to demolish the meat with her teeth. It was amazing how food could make most things feel great. It almost had the same effect as a cup of tea in a bad situation. He knew that the happy feeling that came with a full belly wouldn’t last long.
They were still in this place after all.
Thinking of the food made Stephen think of Lester, without him they wouldn’t have any. He looked at the man responsible for delivering such fine food, food he himself couldn’t enjoy because he was a ghost. Lester looked like he was struggling to swallow some sort of rock which told Stephen that something was wrong, it wasn’t hard judging by Lester’s expression. Or maybe it wasn’t hard for him.
Lester had done something for them, something that had cost him. Would he ever find out just how much? Lester’s shoulders were hunched, his eyes sadder than before, if that was at all possible considering they always expressed deep sorrow and grief.
He wiped his mouth with his coat sleeve as Lester continued to watch him. It was now or never really.
“Lester-”
“You’re going to ask about the murders again, aren’t you?” Lester sighed.
“You can hardly blame me. When you told us what happened I get the sneaky impression that you only told us what you wanted us to hear. What’s the rest of it? If you didn’t murder them, then I will ask the question again, who did?”
Deyna pushed her food to one side. She had never questioned the man’s innocence and right now she looked like she was about to jump to Lester’s defence. Stephen loved that quality about her, that was one of the many reasons they were friends but he needed to be harsh to get the answers.
“Deyna, I need to know. You can’t help him right now.”
She opened her mouth to say something but was cut off when Lester held up his hand.
“He’s right. I did only tell you part of it but there is very little I can tell you... it’s forbidden. You must come to that decision-”
“You found his body, correct?” Stephen asked.
“Yes, I’ve told you this. I found Lee’s body at the front of my shop.”
Stephen recalled Lester’s tale. There were holes everywhere, he just didn’t have enough information, or he hadn’t asked the right questions to fill them up. What surprised him was that he wanted the information because he wanted to know for damn sure that Lester was innocent, he wasn’t sure what they could do to help him, the man was dead already.
“You said you couldn’t sleep on the morning of the murder.” He stopped, thinking back to what had been said. “So you made your way down to the shop. Did you hear anything whilst you couldn’t sleep? A noise?”
“No,” Lester said shaking his head.
“You didn’t hear a noise. Okay. What did you do when you entered the shop?”
“I began my morning routine which consisted of making a cup of tea that I took into the shop and walked around making sure things were in place for opening.”
“Did you do any stock taking?” He’d already asked the question previously, he just wanted to see if he could make Lester slip up.
A small smile quivered on Lester’s lips as he looked down at the floor.
“What are you smiling at?” Phillip asked Lester, a smile of his own playing on his lips.
“I’m smiling at Stephen.”
Stephen looked at his friends before resting his gaze back on Lester. “I didn’t say anything funny.”
No one bothered to laugh when he did say something intentionally funny. Now they smiled when he asked a simple question. Sometimes his friends were strange.
“That is true. You didn’t say anything funny but it’s your mannerisms that make what you say amusing. Have you ever thought of becoming a police officer?”
Startled, Stephen started laughing. Now that was funny. The sound of it echoed around them.
“Me? A police officer?”
Deyna started giggling. “Lester, you don’t know Stephen very well. He’s always getting into trouble. He fights, he swears and he drinks. He even set fire to the school once, well, a part of the school anyway.”
“Deyna, now is not the time to-” Phillip hissed.
“No, she’s right,” Stephen agreed. “I do all those things... I don’t drink that much to be fair and the school burning was an accident.”
He’d been playing with the Bunsen burners in the science department, he couldn’t explain why, and at the time he thought it would be funny to try and set things on fire.
Like you do. Things had escalated from there. Apparently trying to set fire to his trainers had been a step too far because the sole had nearly melted to his hand, he hadn’t expected that to happen, and throwing it in a bin full of paper hadn’t helped either. The fire had spread quickly.
He recalled the rapped knuckles from the police, their formal tones telling him what trouble this could bring him and did he know the consequences of his actions, that he may have a record for life. He’d mumbled his way through his apologies and the police had let him go with a very harsh verbal warning. This warning had been far more enjoyable than the fist his father had thrown at him in a drunken rage.
“I’m not proud of what I’ve done but I believe I’ve learnt from them-”
“Have you?” Phillip asked him, one eyebrow shot up in question.
Stephen didn’t feel the anger that usually pinged the second Phillip asked this, instead he felt some sort of peace. He felt like this experience had changed him. He knew he couldn’t go back to being the person he was.
“I hope I have,” Stephen mumbled.
“You don’t take things seriously, Ste. You think life is one big joke. You have to make some decisions.”
He knew he had to make decisions, he just didn’t know if he would amount to anything. He didn’t have the type of father figure he could look up to. He wasn’t making excuses, but Phillip and Deyna had such a stable, loving family. It was easier to have aspirations. He hoped he could make something of himself.
His biggest fear in life was the realisation that he would become another image of his father, someone who was stuck in a small hamlet with only the bottle to get you through the day. He didn’t want this.
“Yeah, well, I’ve had... listen, I’ve had a different upbringing.”
“We’ve all had to face rather difficult times, lad. It’s what you do now that counts.”
Stephen shook his head. What did the here and now have to do with anything? Whatever happened here wasn’t going to change what he did up there. If there was even an up there in the first place.
“You chose to do all those things Deyna speaks of, yes?”
Stephen nodded feeling more ashamed of everything than he had in a long time.
Lester’s chastising reminded him of his mother’s tone when he’d done something bad. He felt tears prick his eyes thinking of her. God, he missed her.
“So now, now that you’ve really come to understand yourself, and this place will do that to you, what do you choose to do now?”
“Do you mean like a job or something?” Stephen was becoming more and more confused by this conversation. What was Lester getting at? And why had the conversation turned to him?
“No, lad, listen to me. Your actions, what you do in the face of a difficult situation, it shapes who you are as a person. This place will bring out the real you. You
’re faced with this situation.” Lester lifted his hands and looked around him. “So, what do you plan on doing about it?”
Stephen’s head hurt. He’d never really thought about it before. He knew he would eventually have to think about everything but he’d been so good at pushing it to the back of his mind.
Now that he was thinking and apparently taking advice from a ghost, he really had a chance to prove that he wasn’t a waste of space. He’d never felt more afraid, more at danger, yet more alive and himself than he had since entering this place.
He had to congratulate Lester for expertly turning the conversation around so he wasn’t at the centre of it.
“So, you’re not going to tell me who committed the murder then?”
Lester laughed, it was a delighted burst of laughter which had Phillip and Deyna looking like they’d stopped breathing with shock.
“You don’t give up, do you?”
“Nope.”
Lester nodded his head. “Good. When you figure it out, let me know.
j
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
