The Girl in the Woods: A Ghost's Story (Off-Kilter Tales Book 1)

by Michael Robertson

  The weight of what had happened three years ago pushed down so hard on Andy he now had a permanent stoop. Old before his time, he’d need a cane before he turned fifty.

  “I’m not saying you should forget. We’ll never forget. I’m not saying it shouldn’t hurt.” Her voice cracked when she said, “Fuck me, does it hurt. But we need to keep functioning as human beings; otherwise, what’s the point?”

  Andy stared at his soft, pale hands. A lifetime of office work and increasingly less exercise had rounded his edges.

  “Are you even listening to me?”

  A flash of something rose inside him and he glared at his wife of fifteen years. His fingers twitched with the need to ball his fists. He saw Chesky glance down at them. Something about the way her eyes widened told him she wanted him to react. To show her something other than this withdrawn husk of a human being he’d become. But Andy shrugged and let his hands loosen. “Of course I’m listening to you. I’m not deaf.”

  After a heavy sigh, Chesky said, “I have no doubt you’re hearing me, but it doesn’t feel like you’re listening. Do you know what it’s like to be ignored for three years? To be treated like I don’t fucking exist? There’s a hole in my life and I’ve given up waiting for it to be filled.”

  The heat from Andy’s mug burned his grip as he clung on to it. He spoke through gritted teeth. “You think there isn’t one in mine too?”

  “A hole where you used to be, Andy. We need to find a way to move forward.”

  Words sat in a jumbled and chaotic mess in Andy’s mind. He sifted through them, looking for something. A nugget of coherence. A shred of truth. When he found it, the glare of it dazzled him, but he gave it to Chesky anyway, unpolished and unfiltered. “I’m not sure I can move forward.”

  Where there had been the sharp penetration of rage and accusation, Chesky’s blue eyes now softened and filled with tears. Her mouth bent out of shape and it took her a few seconds to reply. “Thank you.”

  “Wh-what for?”

  “For being honest. No matter how much I don’t want to hear it, it’s the truth. At last. I worried you wouldn’t be able to move on, but I needed to be certain. I needed to know I’d done all I could. Thank you for releasing me.”

  The ice in Andy’s heart melted as he looked at the woman he once loved. He drew a deep sigh into his tight chest. He found three more words in the mess that had rendered him emotionally mute. “So that’s it?”

  Chesky nodded, tears now running freely down her face. “That’s it. We did what we could, eh?”

  As Andy’s marriage got to her feet and walked from the room, he did the same thing he’d done for the past three years: he sat there and watched it happen.

  The caffeine in Andy’s system turned his grip on the steering wheel clammy, and his pulse beat double time. His stomach a clenched fist, he blinked repeatedly, but it did little to relieve his itching eyes. The car’s main beam lost its battle against the almost impenetrable darkness closing in from the woodland on either side of the narrow country lane.

  After Chesky made her feelings clear, he hadn’t spoken. What did she want from him? That he should beg her to change her mind? Although maybe what she’d given him was the chance to open up. One last opportunity before she slammed the door on their relationship for good. Maybe he should have told her he loved her and that he’d fight for her. That he’d change and express himself better. Maybe he should have been more attentive and loving over the past three years, and maybe he should have promised he would be from that moment forward. He’d be the man she’d fallen in love with. But, truth be told, that man had gone. It wouldn’t be fair to ask her to wait for someone who’d never return.

  During the day, the woodland on either side of the road would often show Andy red kite, deer, rabbits … Years ago, he’d drive so slow it would send Chesky nuts, but he loved the country, and if he couldn’t take in every second of it, then why were they living there? She rarely saw it that way, placing punctuality over pleasure. But at night it turned into something else entirely. The invite for him to explore got rescinded after dark.

  Andy returned his attention to the road ahead. The black asphalt lit by his wide main beam, he squinted to ease his tired eyes. For what good it did. They’d stung for the past three years with tears he still couldn’t cry. Or maybe refused to cry. If he started, he’d never stop.

  The three-note melody of Andy’s ringtone blared through the speakers, a pang in his chest from where his already quickened pulse accelerated. The screen in his car’s central console mirrored the display on his phone. It read Home.

  Although Andy reached out, he stopped an inch short of pressing the green button. The plinky plonk of his cheery ringtone continued in stereo, a chirpy announcement to what would be another gut-wrenching conversation. Another reminder of his failings. His inability to maintain a relationship with even himself let alone anyone else.

  A deep sigh, Andy pressed the button, if for no other reason than to silence the sound. Because he’d been staring at the bright screen, when he looked up, the glare remained in his vision. He eased off the gas to give him time to regain his night vision.

  Chesky finally spoke, talking over the quiet hiss that showed their call to be connected. “Andy?”

  “Yep.”

  “It’s going to be like that, is it?”

  “You said that’s how it’s been for the past three years, so why change now?”

  A heavy sigh and Chesky said, “Don’t blame me for your behaviour. All I did was call it out.”

  Andy’s knuckles ached from his grip on the wheel. The vibration of the tyres against the road ran through his hands and up his forearms.

  Chesky spoke with a softer tone. “Please understand, I’ve tried everything. I didn’t want it to come to this, but I’m not sure where else we can go.”

  “You’ve made your choice.”

  “You made a choice every day for the past three years!”

  “So that’s what this is?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’ve called to make yourself feel better about being a heartless bitch. You want to put all the blame on me and expect me to let you? That way, you can walk away from this with a clear conscience. You can now go and hop into bed with whomever you please. You gave me my chance; now you can finally move on.”

  “This isn’t about me having sex with someone else. This is about me not having the energy to be in a relationship with you anymore. You were the one who gave up. You lay down a long time ago. I’ve had to make this decision for the sake of my own sanity.”

  “You didn’t have to.” The echo of his words rang through Andy’s mind. God, he sounded pathetic. So desperate to hold on to a broken relationship. Maybe she’d done him a favour. He’d be miserable whether with her or not.

  “Do you know, you’ve just said more to me on this phone call than you have in the past month?”

  Andy pressed his lips tight and breathed through his nose.

  “Anyway, what I wanted to say is I hope you find everything you deserve. You’re a good man with an open heart—when you let yourself open it. You have a lot to give, so don’t deprive yourself by not giving it. Don’t spend the rest of your life alone because you can’t face what’s happened.”

  “How can I ever be happy?”

  “I’m not sure I’m the right person to answer that. But if I ever think of anything that’ll help, I’ll be sure to let you know. Goodbye, Andy.”

  The click of the call disconnected through the car, and Andy’s entire frame sank, deflating with his long sigh.

  At some point Andy would find a hotel. At some point, when the tears stopped, when he could see straight, and when he had it in him to talk to a receptionist. One room for one night. Five simple words, but they were beyond his reach for now. And it wouldn’t be one night. One night every night for the rest of his life. A hotel. A bedsit where he had to sleep beside an oven. An old people’s home. Whichever form it
took, his destiny stretched ahead of him, a cheap, lonely, and uncomfortable accommodation providing the perfect metaphor for his existence.

  But for now, Andy would drive. He glanced down at the speedometer; the digital blue dial blurred through tears he should have cried three years ago.

  Forty miles per hour.

  The trees flashed past on either side. The dense press closed in as if the faster he went, the tighter the road became. Impenetrable darkness sat just beyond his headlights’ glow.

  Forty-five miles per hour.

  He’d find a room in a cheap hotel eventually. Somewhere utterly lacking in soul and personality. The genesis of his new beginning.

  Fifty miles per hour.

  Shit television until three in the morning. Shit television with the volume turned up so loud the neighbouring rooms would complain. But he didn’t care because he needed something to drown out his internal narrative. Self-loathing screamed through him with the velocity of a guitar solo at a rock concert. Maybe he’d pay for porn. He’d definitely pay for porn, his laptop back at the house with the life he’d abandoned. He could wank his way towards feeling something. It might help him sleep. If not, he’d drink the minibar dry.

  Fifty-five miles per hour.

  If he’d have said no, she would have listened. As final as her words were, he knew Chesky. She’d laid down the last chance and given him the option to fight one last time for everything they’d built together. But as much as he’d wanted to, he couldn’t. The words were lost in the jumbled mess of his mind. Or maybe they weren’t. Maybe he wanted her to leave. If no one loved him, then he didn’t have to love himself. If he didn’t love himself, he didn’t have to heal himself. And therein lay the problem. He knew that. He’d known it for years. Deep inside him sat a box. A box he’d locked three years ago. If he peered inside, he wouldn’t ever be able to close the lid again. If he wanted to reconnect with his wife, he’d have to peer inside.

  Sixty miles per hour.

  The trees were a blur.

  The long dark road wouldn’t stay straight forever.

  Sixty-five miles per hour.

  Grief sat as a tumour in his throat. A rock that would swell to the point of choking him. Swallowing sent stabbing pains into his chest. Maybe deer would run out. Maybe he’d become an urban legend, a tale of caution to those who drove too fast.

  One ran across the road and he didn’t slow down. He hit the second—the larger and slower of the two. Its legs went straight through the windscreen and it panicked. It kicked and kicked. Its hard hooves turned his face to mush as they beat through the front of his skull.

  Seventy miles per hour.

  They say he was on his way to collect his lottery winnings. So excited, he drove too fast. He had no loved ones. The prize remains unclaimed. They searched the wreck but couldn’t find the winning ticket. To this day, no one has found it. But if you’re on that road at midnight, it’s rumoured that you can hear the shriek of car tyres.

  The far reach of the car’s full beam showed the bend in the road.

  Seventy-five miles per hour.

  Andy wrung the steering wheel and pressed harder against the already floored accelerator, the muscles in his right thigh aching from the pressure.

  Eighty miles per hour.

  They say a tree’s the worst thing to hit in a crash. Trees don’t yield, whereas cars, especially modern cars, are designed to fall apart. There’s only ever one winner. A tree’s the best thing to hit in a crash.

  Eighty-five miles per hour.

  He might be letting his tears out after all this time, but the words wouldn’t ever come. How could he possibly begin to articulate his feelings? Language fell woefully short as a form of expression. Andy reached down, his seatbelt unlatching with a quiet but definitive click.

  Ninety miles per hour, the trees hurtling past him at a nauseating speed.

  Anything had to be better than the shame. Of telling friends … well, he didn’t have any friends left, but he could already see his mother’s face when he tells her his relationship’s fallen apart like everything else in his pathetic life. And she’d blame Chesky. And he’d let her. Simply because it would be easier to. The path of least resistance. It wasn’t like his mum would ever see her again. So maybe, just this once, he should take charge of his own destiny. For the first time in years he could play an active role in his fate.

  Ninety-five miles per hour. The tyres hummed and the steering wheel wobbled. Pains streaked up either side of his face, his jaw clamped so tightly his gums ached.

  Besides, he didn’t have it in him to go through the courts, arguing over every possession like filling a storage unit with bad memories would somehow restore his self-respect.

  Ninety-eight miles per hour. He watched the speedometer, barely able to see the numbers through his tears.

  This way had to be better. A deep breath to fill his lungs, his nose clogged with snot.

  Ninety-nine miles per hour.

  A flash of white on the left—hard to tell what at this speed—but instinct took over and Andy stamped on the brake. The car’s ABS sent a machine-gun stutter through his body, the wheels locking for the final few metres.

  Now he’d stopped, Andy sat in the driver’s seat panting while staring at the trees he’d come so close to colliding with. The wall of immovable trunks formed a militant line, standing before him in judgement. When he looked in his mirror, the wall of black revealed nothing of what he’d seen. He threw the car into reverse and accelerated backwards.

  The breath left Andy when he pulled level with the flash of light. Although, not a flash of light. A flash of white. A white nightie. A white nightie on a girl no older than about ten years old.

  As Andy sat in his car, the heat from the blowers stinging his already sore eyes, he focused on the little girl in the dark woods. She stumbled and tripped through the undergrowth, walking as if drunk. He worked his jaw, limbering up to say something before he finally managed, “What the fuck?”

  The girl’s wobbly path through the woods appeared completely lacking in intention as she veered one way and then the other. Such a pure sight in such a dark setting, it turned a cold chill through Andy. Her long blonde hair—dirty and matted—covered her face, her attention on the ground.

  Despite the close press of trees turning the dark shadows darker, the girl stood out as if tracked by a spotlight. The nearly full moon found a way through the canopy and lit her up. The glare of it highlighted the stains on her dirty nightie. A mild evening, but not so mild the kid wouldn’t get hypothermia.

  The girl continued to shuffle forwards. If the undergrowth tore at her pale and exposed legs like Andy would expect it to, she didn’t show it. She must have heard his stopping, reversing, and now idling on the side of the road, but the child didn’t look up once. The longer he watched her, the more details he noticed. She shivered, giving her progression the slightest of stutters. Her skin was so pale it proved tricky to know where her nightie ended and she began. Her pasty limbs were stick thin.

  Could it be a ghost? Did ghosts feel the cold?

  It could be stress making him see things. Hell, he nearly drove himself off the road a few seconds ago. Maybe something deep inside took over, saving his life by creating a girl who didn’t exist.

  Yes, that had to be it.

  But Andy still remained on the side of the road and watched her. “I’m not going to kill myself now. You can take the kid away.”

  The car’s only response came in the form of a ticking engine and blowing fans.

  Andy picked his phone up, the glow of it bursting through the soft glow of his car’s interior. The device buzzed, rejecting his sweaty thumbprint. He typed in his code: her date of birth.

  Andy stared down at the contact. Home. Chesky would know what to do. But should he call her? She’d made it pretty clear. O-V-E-R didn’t leave any room for confusion. He needed to stand on his own two feet. He needed to stop being so passive. Not one for friends, he didn’t h
ave anyone else to call. His mum would be in bed. Besides, only Chesky would take him seriously. Anyone else, including his mother, would assume he’d lost the plot. Had he?

  “I’m imagining her,” Andy said to the empty car. He banged the heel of his hand against his forehead. The girl continued to walk through the woods no more than ten metres away. “I’m imagining her. She’s not real.”

  But she looked real, and anything could happen to her. Could he drive away from that? Could he let someone’s child die cold, scared, and alone because he had no backbone?

  Andy stared at his phone. Chesky had always been a support to him, even over the past few years. He’d not given much back in that time. He’d not given much to anyone since it had happened. But she would know what to do.

  After shaking his head, Andy put his phone down again. He should drive away. What kind of nutter got out of a car on a road like this and chased a figment of his imagination around a cold, dark, and damp woods? What if the police stopped? They’d have him committed and he’d lose his job. Homeless, jobless, and with no friends to help him out, he’d be sleeping on flattened boxes in a cold doorway by the end of the week.

  But what if she was real? It kept coming back to that. What if she was real and he left her? Could he live with himself if he saw a missing persons ad with her small face on it? And then a report on the news of a body found in the woods? Could he really do what he always did? Fuck all. Less than fuck all. Since it had happened, he’d been nothing but a hindrance to anyone who’d had the misfortune of crossing his path.

  Andy beeped the car’s horn and jumped because of the blare.

  A slow and unrelenting trudge, the girl continued forward. She could be real. She could be sleepwalking. She could be escaping someone. Someone who would find her if Andy didn’t help.

  But the sound of a horn would wake her, wouldn’t it? Or at least attract her attention. Andy pressed the horn again. This time, he held it down for longer.