by Lily Morton
Alfred bellows.
The obstruction in my throat shifts. I cough and gag until something flies out and lands on the ground in front of me. To my horror, it’s a woman’s crocheted glove, tiny and worn and bloodstained.
Did this belong to one of the victims? I taste something unspeakably vile and coppery in my mouth. I hawk and spit into the dust.
Dust from the rubble billows. I scramble through it and throw myself next to Levi. He grabs me tightly with one arm. His cast is ripped, hanging by his side at a funny angle.
“You okay? Your poor arm, Levi,” I whisper hoarsely, my words falling over themselves and tangling in my throat.
“I’m alright. Where is he?” He gulps. “Oh God, I can see him. He’s just staring at us, Blue.”
Alfred smiles wickedly. All is still as if we’ve been suspended in motion. I look wildly around for a weapon, a tool, something to help us, but there’s nothing. The tube of salt lies on the floor with the last granules scattered around.
I fumble for Levi’s hand and clutch it tight. “Levi,” I whisper. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want you to ever apologise to me again,” he says softly.
He hugs me hard as we wait for Alfred. This is it.
The spirit watches us with a gloating expression on his face. He moves and I cringe, gripping Levi and pressing my head to his shoulder. He murmurs something, an instruction to hide my eyes.
The air shifts, and Alfred’s expression changes to one I’ve never seen on him before—fear. I inhale sharply. Then slowly, like gas escaping, shadows move and seep out of the hole in the wall.
They twine around the rubble, rubbing against the broken jars before rising to hover in the air. The shadows flicker and melt into the shapes of five women. They surround Alfred. Grey and faint though they are, I can still pick out the details of their dresses and hairstyles. They stand silently watching Alfred as if waiting for something.
A low humming vibrates through the room. A wind picks up out of nowhere, blowing my hair back and sending dust clouds billowing and glittering into the air.
Alfred looks wildly around and another figure metamorphosizes. It’s Rosalind, and she stands before him in full colour, as real-looking as me and Levi.
She stares at her brother and he grimaces, lifting a hand almost unconsciously to his throat. She begins to pace in a wide circle, the silent women joining her. Alfred is at the circle’s centre. As Rosalind walks, a thin, sparkling line appears at her feet.
The humming gets louder, and suddenly the shadowy women start to advance, moving slowly but without hesitation. The smell of lily of the valley and blood comes to me, and I fling myself onto Levi as he rolls onto his back with a groan of pain.
“What’s happening?” he shouts above the rising noise.
I shield his face with my body. Alfred screams, and the women’s figures splinter and blow apart only to reform around him. The screaming intensifies as they begin to tear him apart. He vanishes underneath their writhing shapes.
“What’s happening?” Levi says.
“Don’t look at them, Marion!” I shout.
“What the fuck? Are you quoting Indiana Jones at me?” he yells, and he sounds so cross and indignant that, incredibly, I feel laughter rise in me.
It dies as I watch the women shred Alfred, bits of him flying into the air like papery cinders rising from a fire. All the while, the figure of Rosalind paces around the circle like a sentinel.
Alfred gives one last desperate scream as if he’s being dragged to hell. By his balls.
Then everything falls silent. His remains sparkle in the air before twisting and falling to the ground, winking out like sparks from a firework.
I swallow hard as one of the shadows comes towards me. When she gets closer, I can see that it’s Emily. She has her eyes back and the gaping hole in her chest has vanished.
“Thank you.” It’s so faint that it’s like a whisper in the air.
I smile at her.
She raises her head as if scenting something. A sudden wind blows through the cellar, bringing with it the sweet smell of rain on dry earth. Emily and the other shadowy figures splinter and disappear, letting the breeze bear them away.
Silence descends, the only sound our panting breaths. Eventually, I roll off Levi and onto my back.
“Is it done?” he asks.
I lift my head and look around, gauging the atmosphere with my senses.
The cellar is empty again. Only the dust and bricks and various items of murderous equipment hint at what just happened. The air is still and warm.
“It’s done,” I say, lowering my head to his chest and feeling his arm pull me closer.
“Holy shit,” he mutters.
Incredibly, I laugh. “You can say that again.”
He looks over at the Gladstone bag and the smashed jars and the squishy horrible things in red water that I’m trying really hard not to look at.
“Blue, if I didn’t suspect that I’ve broken my arm again, I’d arm wrestle you for the chance not to tell the police that we’ve knocked a wall down in my cellar and inadvertently managed to solve a famous historical murder.”
“I have got very agile elbows, so I’d probably have won anyway,” I say modestly.
He snorts.
I nudge him. “Look on the bright side. We’re both gay, so ninety percent of the coppers attending the scene will think we were just having a sex party.”
His laughter is loud in the silence. “We should really ring someone, though,” he finally says.
I snuggle closer. “Later. Let’s just lie here a bit longer and cherish the fact that it’s finally over.” I feel the stiffness in his body and look up. “You alright?”
He sits, wincing at the movement, and looks at me. “It’s really over?”
I nod. “Alfred’s gone and I think the women are at peace now.”
“Maybe they couldn’t rest until we uncovered the jars.”
“Maybe.”
My hand falls away from Levi. Realisation hits suddenly and with the force of a punch. There’s no longer a reason for us to be together. As horrible as the events have been, they’ve also been sort of wonderful—they’ve brought me and Levi together—and I don’t want to let him go.
He looks deeply into my eyes, and I don’t know what he sees. Probably everything. He has an unnerving ability to pluck my emotions from thin air.
Finally, a smile spreads slowly over his face.
“Maybe we’d better stick close though, Blue,” he says huskily. “You know, just in case.”
My answering smile is a face-splitter. “Just in case,” I say demurely and then spoil it by hugging him tight and kissing him lustily.
Finally, he pulls back. “Could be with me for a long time. You okay with that?”
I look into his eyes and run my finger down that gorgeous face. “I’m not doing anything special. I’ve got the time. Have you?”
Epilogue
Five Months Later
Blue
I gather my group around me, noticing with satisfaction the large number. I don’t need to do the ghost tour anymore because I now have a job, but it’s very satisfactory to walk past my ex, Hugh, and mentally stick two fingers up at him. Okay, sometimes I do actually stick two fingers up at him.
“So, this is the Murder House,” I say in a carrying voice. “The home of the notorious Devil of York. We stopped at the scene of his last crime, but this was his home and where his dreadful career was brought to a stop when his life was ended by his sister. She had learnt of his evil ways and, knowing the police wouldn’t believe her, she courageously ended his life, thus saving countless women from a dire end.” I say this last bit slightly louder in case Rosalind is listening. She deserves the credit.
“Is it true that you found eyeballs in the cellar?” comes a voice from the back.
I take off my hat and flourish it. “There were indeed eyeballs. Buried in a wall along with a lot of other very
unpleasant body parts and the man’s murder bag.”
“And you found them?” the voice carries on. I think it’s the very earnest young man who’s followed every word I’ve spoken tonight quite closely, as if he expects I’ll test him at the tour’s end.
“It was me.” The group sighs and moves closer. “Well, me and my boyfriend,” I add quickly. “I suppose he had a bit of a hand in discovering it too.”
At that point the kitchen window shoots up and several of the women shriek. The figure of my boyfriend appears in the window wearing jeans, a blue plaid shirt, and a slightly sardonic expression.
“Oh, really?” he says silkily. “A bit of a hand, eh?”
I smile up at him. It’s impossible not to when he looks so handsome. “Well, you had broken your arm again, babe.”
He shakes his head. “You forgot your coffee.” Through the open window, he passes me the travel mug he bought me a few weeks ago that says What would Dean do? on the side.
“Thank you, boo,” I say cheerfully.
He grimaces. “For the five hundredth time, please don’t call me that.”
“Any questions?” I ask, evading the subject. “Me and my boo are here for you. Exclusively and not available on any of the other ghost tours,” I emphasise.
Levi snorts.
A few people put up their hands, and together Levi and I deal with them like a team. Eventually, the questions, which mainly seem to be about which body parts were in the wall, die out.
“Well, we should be moving on,” I say.
Levi sags with relief. It makes me want to smile.
An elderly lady steps forward. “Is this the house where you see naked men?” she demands querulously. “My sister came a few months ago and she saw one.”
I can actually see Levi blush. He’s so adorable.
“Sometimes,” I say to her, starting to usher the group along. “But he’ll only appear if you’re pure of heart and mind.”
I turn back to wave at Levi. He’s standing with his arms folded.
“Well, we must be off, folks. There’s more murder and mayhem ahead of us. Say goodnight to my boo.”
He waves as the group obediently mumble goodbyes, and I blow him a kiss.
I glance up and see the figure of Rosalind in the front bedroom window. No one in the group realises that they’ve missed a genuine real-life ghost, and I don’t tell them. It’s our secret. She’s staring out at us with an impenetrable expression on her face.
I blink and she’s gone. By now Levi has closed the kitchen window and the blind, but I know he’s there still, and it makes me feel funny in a good sort of way. Like it’s my home I’m looking at, even though it’s not. He’s my home.
I moved out of the house once the problems had been sorted. He argued against it at the time, wanting me to stay, but even though I was flattered, I stuck to my guns and took the flat over the bookshop that Tom had offered me.
It’s small, with a kitchen that looks like it was last renovated in the fifties. It’s freezing in winter and apparently it’ll be boiling in the summer, but the windows look out on the narrow lane and if I crane my neck I can see the Minster.
It’s a lane that’s filled with both the living and the dead. Ghosts of past booksellers are always around, like the man who wanders the street in the morning with his head in a book. And not literally either, which is a relief after our last experience with body parts. The ghosts on my lane seem to be happy ghosts, which I put down to their love of reading.
In the flat I’m safe, and when I lie in bed and reach out to touch the walls on either side of my bed it feels like I’m in a nest all of my own. And something in me thrills that it’s just me in there. After all the years of sharing breathing space with so many strangers, the fact that I can sit there in isolation is special. I’ll curl up on the ancient sofa in the lounge listening to the sounds of people outside and cherishing the quiet around me.
I’m pretty sure that Levi believes I’m scared of having a relationship after being alone and independent for so long, but the truth is that I’m just protective.
I’m protective of him and what we’re building together. Moving too quickly might damage that. I see him clearly and so do other men. He’s clever and funny and bloody gorgeous, but he’s also mine and I don’t want that ever to stop. He’s the first thing in my life that’s ever belonged just to me and I hoard that to myself. He’s the first thing I’ve ever dared to ask for.
We see each other every day and usually end up in the same bed together, whether it’s at his or mine. Let’s face it, it’s more often at his. I’m not stupid. His house is gorgeous and two people fit comfortably in his bed without risking suffocation. However, he seems to find my flat charming and I don’t complain when we have to snuggle tight.
My group and I finally move off down the lane, the Minster a bright light ahead of us.
I pull up my collar against the cold wind which persists even though it’s spring. It’s amazing how much has changed in my life.
A year ago at the end of a tour, I would have been dreading the cold, thinking of the damp squat I was heading home to. My life was dreary and dark and filled with so much fear, but I only recognise that now because of its absence. Now, I’m learning to look forward to a future rather than living firmly in the present.
I’ve learnt that I like certain things about the cold weather. I like walking with Levi, one hand around his waist as his arm rests comfortingly over my shoulder. I like the fact that I’ve learnt to cook stews and how good they taste in a warm room that smells of apple from the log fire and wild fig from the candles he buys at a little shop around the corner.
But most of all, I like it because I know that at the end of the night I’ll be able to curl up in bed with Levi. He’ll let me put my cold feet on him, and we’ll talk and laugh about the things that have happened in the day. He’ll listen to me with those warm dark eyes of his intent on me as if I’m somehow fascinating to him. Then he’ll draw me to him or I’ll move over him and we’ll fuck. It’s so much more now, even though I’m still wary of naming it.
When we’re spent, he’ll fall asleep, and I’ll curl myself around him, feeling his warmth seem to move into my body. I’ll lay my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat. And then I’ll be able to identify what I’m feeling, even though I’ve never in my life felt it before.
I think it might be happiness.
Levi
It’s lunchtime when I come down the stairs. Going into the kitchen, I whistle as I grab my keys and the sandwiches I made earlier. Then I pause. The kitchen is as neat and tidy and clean as an operating theatre, and I certainly didn’t leave it that way this morning.
I bite my lip. “Erm, thank you,” I say out loud, and if my voice is slightly high then at least my boyfriend isn’t around to take the piss. “Thank you for clearing up, Rosalind,” I say. “It was very good of you.” I nod to emphasise my point.
There’s no reply, and I still don’t see her, but a light drift of lily of the valley swirls around me and the kitchen cools slightly—things that always happen when she’s around.
Blue wasn’t quite right in the cellar when he said everyone had gone. Rosalind never moved on. We’ve never heard from Alfred again. and Blue says that he never sees his last victim anymore. But somehow, and for some reason, Rosalind is still here. Maybe it’s because she sees this as her house. Maybe she sees it as her due for what she went through. But here she stays.
I’ve never seen her, but Blue has. He says she seems content. I’d replied that surely it’s a good mood for someone who once had a predilection for letting a cutthroat razor do her thinking for her, but he’d just laughed as if I was joking. News flash. I wasn’t.
Instead of being landed with a traditional ghost that walks the corridors and endlessly drags dead bodies about, we’ve ended up with someone who seems rather particular about how the house is being kept. If we’re messy, we soon know about it. Like the other night when the
covers were pulled off us at two in the morning, and she banged the doors on the wardrobe until we got up and cleaned the bedroom.
It’s rather like having a homicidal Kim Woodburn living with us, but as Blue thinks it’s funny, I’ve learnt just to let go and accept it.
Still, I was brought up to be polite so, as I grab my coat and my sketchbook, I tip my head respectfully. “I’m just going out, Miss Rosalind. Be back soon.”
The perfume swirls around me again and then it’s gone as quickly as if it was sucked out by a vent.
I shake my head and let myself out of my house, pausing to look up at it affectionately. It has such a good feeling about it now that Alfred is gone. It feels warm and light and welcoming. Although some of that must come from me and Blue.
I’m so happy with him. He’s utterly unlike anyone I ever went for before, but somehow he’s everything I need. Friend, partner in crime, sounding board, and lover. I’ve never had all that in one person before, and it’s why I love him.
We haven’t said the words yet. I don’t know whether he ever will. I don’t even know whether he’s realised that he loves me, but I know it. It’s written over every inch of him in the way he looks after me, the way he strokes my chest at night and whispers secrets into my skin that I can’t hear. I don’t need the words, when I have him.
I look up at the house again. I do need him to live with me eventually, but not until he’s ready, and that isn’t now. Waving to Mrs Petersham who lives in the big house, I set off up the lane towards the Dean’s Park.
Spring is in the air. Although it’s still very cold, the tulips and daffodils are starting to poke their heads bravely above the ground, offering bright splashes of colour amongst the trees. A family is sitting on one of the benches watching their children run along the grass, and I can hear the familiar clattering and banging as the stonemasons work on the Minster. It’s a cheerful and busy sound.
I settle on what we now think of as our bench which is next to the old war memorial. Stretching my legs out, I start to sketch while I wait for Blue. I quickly become absorbed, and although not much pulls me from my work while I’m in it, Blue still manages it ably. A short time later, I feel a tickle on my senses, and when I look up, he’s coming towards me. Dressed in jeans, combat boots, and a forest-green jumper with a beanie covering his shock of dirty-blond hair, he looks a world away from the boy I first met.