by Cross, Amy
“I just mean that you mustn't be afraid to open up, or to shake up your thoughts a little. Sometimes fear can keep people from really addressing their true feelings. I like to tell people that grief is like a locked door. You have the key in your possession somewhere, but you have to find it, and that often means searching parts of your mind that might feel very painful. These therapy sessions are really about helping you to conquer your fear and help yourself. And I truly believe that everyone can be helped.”
“I should get going,” he replied. “I have a lot to do tonight, and I'm already running late.”
“You'll come back next week, won't you?”
“I'll try.”
“Please come. Even if you don't say anything in the session, I'd like to know that you're getting some kind of help.”
“I've got a feeling the next week might be quite busy,” he replied as he climbed onto his bike and started slowly cycling away into the darkness, “but I'll do my absolute best. That's all anyone can promise, right?”
“Of course.”
She watched as he disappeared into the distance. After a moment, taking a tissue from her pocket, she dabbed at her eyes before finishing strapping her helmet securely in place. Once that was done, she looked along the street and saw that the man was out of sight, and then she began to push her bike the other way, taking a right turn down the side of the civic center and making her way along the alley. Lost in thought, replaying the past few minutes over and over in her mind, she soon had to wipe a few more tears away. She always felt a little emotional and raw after group sessions, but this particular evening had been particularly tough. She even -
Suddenly someone grabbed her from behind, placing a hand over her mouth and quickly shoving her against the wall. Before she could even try to react, a knife sliced straight into her back, puncturing her heart. The tip of the blade sliced out just above her breast, poking against the inside of her shirt but not quite tearing through.
“I'm sorry,” the man whispered into her ear, as blood began to trickle from her mouth, “I didn't plan for this to happen. It's just that, like I said, tonight was the first time I've ever really talked to anyone about what happened.”
Chapter Ten
“Stop!” Casey screamed, struggling frantically to unbuckle her seat-belt as screams rang out all around her in the plane. “Somebody help me!”
Feeling a blast of hear against the left side of her face, she turned just in time to see flames roaring along the aisle. For a moment, she could only watch as a man in one of the other seats leaned back and screamed. The flames quickly overcame him, but Casey was just about able to make out his silhouette as he cried out, and she heard him begging for help before finally his body slumped forward in the seat.
“Mummy!” a girl screamed from the next row back. “Mummy, wake up! Please, you have to wake up!”
Finally getting her belt loose, Casey clambered out of her seat and into the aisle. The air was thick with foul black smoke and she could feel her lungs burning. Stumbling forward, she dropped to her knees and found herself face-to-face with a little girl who was pulling desperately on a woman's arm.
“Mummy!” the girl shouted. “Help!”
Peering past the girl, Casey was just about able to make out the woman's face with a thick, bloody wound on her temple, as if the force of the impact had slammed her against the back of the seat in front. Part of the woman's skull looked to have collapsed, and her dead eyes were straight straight ahead as blood ran trickled from her mouth.
“I'm getting you out of here!” Casey stammered, grabbing the girl's seat-belt and fumbling to get it open.
“We have to take Mummy with us!” the girl shouted.
“It's too late!”
Grabbing the girl, Casey hauled her out of the seat. Ignoring her continued cries for her mother, she began to carry the girl toward the rear of the plane, past rows and rows of dead bodies. Before she could get much further, however, she saw flames bursting through the crew area, blocking the only other way out.
“Okay,” she muttered under her breath, turning and seeing a wall of flame and black smoke getting closer and closer from the front of the plane, “how are we going to get out of here?”
“We aren't,” the little girl said suddenly, her voice sounding much calmer.
Casey pulled back to look at the girl's face, and she saw that although tear-tracks were still glistening on the girl's cheek, her eyes seemed unnaturally still, almost as if she'd accepted her fate.
“Mummy and I didn't get out,” the girl continued matter-of-factly. “Mummy died when the plane hit the ground, and I died about thirty seconds later in the fire.”
“What are you talking about?” Casey asked. “Where's -”
Before she could finish, she realized that the girl's face seemed to be swelling slightly. A moment later, the girl opened her mouth and let out a thick curl of black smoke as her flesh began to darken and crack, as if she was starting to burn from the inside. Her lips began to twitch, as if she was trying to say something, but all that emerged from her throat now was a sickening gurgle of pain, followed a moment later by an eruption of blood that send Casey stumbling back.
“We all died!” the girl gasped, clutching Casey's shoulders and holding tight as the heat began to build and build. “Mummy was lucky. She didn't know anything from after the plane hit the ground. But some of us knew. Some of us burned to death.”
“Wait -”
Suddenly flames burst from the girl's body. Casey fell back, slamming down hard on the carpeted floor between seats. The girl's burning body landed on top of her, with a skeletal face just about visible in the heart of the inferno.
Casey quickly pushed her aside and began to get up, but the air was too hot and she immediately slumped back down. With nowhere to go, she rolled onto her side and curled up tight, while covering her face with her arms. At the same time, she saw that the flesh on her hands was starting to crackle and redden, and a moment later flames began to erupt from her chest.
“Help me!” Casey screamed, as she felt the skin on her face starting to burn away. “Somebody help!”
“Casey?”
Sitting up suddenly in bed and letting out a panicked gasp, Casey saw her mother standing in the doorway.
“Are you alright, love?” her mother said cautiously, looking around the darkened room. “I heard... Well, I just thought I heard...”
Startled, Casey looked down at her bare arms, as if she expected to find that they were burning.
“I'm fine,” she said after a moment, looking over at her mother.
“Were you having a nightmare?”
“I'm fine!” she said again. “Can you just shut the door so I can get out of bed? I need to take a shower before work.”
She waited, but her mother was loitering in the doorway as if she expected some kind of long, drawn-out conversation.
“Mum,” she continued, “when I get back in the morning, we need to talk about those online psychics you keep using. They're just ripping you off, and they're taking money you can't afford to spend. I know they're costing you, like, a hundred pounds at a time, and the whole thing is just a big waste of time. We're going to draw up a budget plan for you, and then -”
“I'll make some tea,” her mother said, starting to turn away.
“No, Mum, we need to talk! We -”
Before she could finish, the door bumped shut.
“Mum!” Casey called out. “Don't get angry at me! I'm just trying to help! The whole ghost thing is just a waste of money!”
She waited, hoping against hope that her mother might actually start listening to her, but a moment later she heard footsteps shuffling down the stairs.
“I'm just trying to help you,” she muttered. “I'm just trying to make you see sense.”
Grabbing her phone, she brought up a web browser and immediately checked her bookmarks for the list of passengers who'd died in the crash at Hexley. Sorting the results by
age, she scanned the names and then clicked on the only entry that seemed to match the little girl from her nightmare.
“Tamsin Harper,” she whispered, reading a news report that mentioned Tamsin – or Tammy, as she liked to be known – had died along with her mother Jennifer.
Scrolling down the page, she stopped as soon as she found some photos of the devastated family.
“That's her,” she whispered, staring at the picture that showed Tammy Harper smiling at the camera a few weeks before her death. “That's the girl I saw in my dream.”
***
Trudging along the forest path, with the lights of the terminal building in the distance, Casey finally spotted a dark shard of stone rising up from the forest floor. The air was cold enough for her to see her own breath, but the muddy ground had begun to freeze and flakes of snow were drifting down between the trees as Casey made her way to the stone and then stopped to shine her flashlight up at the inscription.
Shocked, she saw that the monument had been broken apart.
Chunks of stone lay scattered all around, as if something had slammed against the monument and left it shattered. Crouching down, Casey used her flashlight to take a closer look at one particular section, and she was just about able to read some of the names. She'd seen the monument from the bus a few times, but this was the first time she'd ever got off a stop early and gone to take a closer look.
Suddenly hearing a crunching sound nearby, she turned and spotted a face staring at her from the darkness.
“Hey!” she called out, realizing it was the same man she'd spotted in the forest once before. “Did you see who -”
Before she could finish, the man turned and hurried away, and Casey briefly glimpsed his torn orange t-shirt before he disappeared from view.
“I just want to ask you something!” she shouted. “Did you see who destroyed the monument? You're not in trouble, I just need to know what you saw!”
She waited, but he was long gone.
“Great,” she muttered under her breath. “Thanks for all the help.”
She stayed in the clearing for a few more minutes, reading the names, before finally turning and making her way toward the lights in the distance. As she walked, she passed within a few feet of a little girl wearing a burned white dress. The girl turned and watched her, but Casey was completely oblivious to her presence. Instead, she simply headed toward the road, while the little girl watched for a moment before starting to follow.
***
“But who would do something like that?” Casey asked as she hung her jacket on the hook in the security office. “It look like someone had taken a sledgehammer to the thing. I can't even believe it's possible.”
“There are some strange people in the world,” Tom replied. “I'll put it in the logbook and get someone to go out and take a look in the morning. I hope whoever damaged that memorial is happy with their work. Bloody vandals.”
“It's not just damaged. It's been destroyed.”
He sighed. “Probably kids.”
“It seems more deliberate than that.”
“Well, I'm sure someone'll figure it out eventually.”
“They reckon the storm's going to get really hard during the night,” Casey continued. “By three, there's going to be so much snow, there'll almost be more snow than air. I doubt they'll even be able to let any planes take off or land here in the morning.”
“Do you realize how much money this place loses for every hour it has to stop operating during the day?” Tom asked, as he continued to sort through the box of teabags. “There's nothing the bosses won't do to make sure the runway stays open. They'll run each plane through the deicers twice if they have to. Believe me, they've done that before.”
“But there's a limit, right?” Casey asked. “There has to come a point when -”
“Short of another ice age,” he replied, interrupting her as he held up a pack of green tea and scowled, “there'll be planes running in and out of Hexley all day tomorrow. Now, I'm more concerned about these bags. Someone keeps drinking all my nice Yorkshire tea, and then replacing it with this green rubbish. I mean, what's the world coming to?”
“Green tea's good for you,” Casey pointed out.
“That's how it is, huh? Your third shift, and you're already giving me health advice. God, I get enough of that at home.”
“Have you actually tried it?” she asked, stepping away from the doorway, where the pale little girl stood unnoticed by either of them. “It's not so bitter with a little lemon.”
“I'll stick to my Yorkshire tea, thanks,” he muttered.
“What's this about?” she said, checking the board and seeing several flashing lights. “The system's picking something up on one of the cameras. Installation 338b. Where's that?”
“Not sure. Bring it up.”
She tapped the panel, before looking up at the central monitor and seeing a picture of herself and Tom in the control room.
“Must be on the fritz,” Tom muttered.
“The facial recognition system's doing something,” she pointed out, watching as the computer tried over and over again to analyze a seemingly empty space in the doorway behind them both. After a moment, she turned and looked straight at the little girl, who she seemingly still hadn't noticed. A moment after that, she looked back up at the monitor. “It thinks there's someone there.”
“Well, there isn't,” Tom pointed out.
“Then what -”
“I told you on your first night,” he continued with a sigh. “In fact, I think it was one of the very first things I told you about this whole airport. All these fancy schmancy high-tech systems aren't worth the circuit-boards they're printed on.” He turned and looked toward the doorway, staring directly at the little girl, and then he looked back at the box of teabags. “If these cameras were any good, I'd have caught the teabag thief by now. That's the real mystery here.”
“It really thinks there's someone standing in the doorway,” Casey replied, squinting a little as she continued to peer at the screen. “Someone not too tall, either. Look at how the grid keeps trying to form in a spot about four feet from the floor.”
She watched the screen for a moment longer, before turning and heading over to the doorway. Stopping right in front of the girl, who was now looking up at her face, Casey hesitated before crouching down and staring almost directly into the girl's eyes.
Almost, but not quite.
“Right here,” she continued, turning back to look at the monitor and seeing that the system had identified her face, while a second box was still trying to pick out a face next to her. “Do you feel cold suddenly?”
After a moment, she turned back to look toward the pale little girl who had followed her all the way from the forest. For a few seconds, Casey's eyes began to focus on one particular space in the doorway, and her pupils briefly tightened before enlarging again. Finally, her gaze met the little girl's exactly, and she stared into the dead eyes that in turn stared straight back at her.
“Nope,” she said suddenly, getting to her feet and turning her back to the girl, looking over toward Tom. “There's nothing there. It's crazy. I definitely felt colder by the door, though.”
Behind her, the girl reached up with a burned hand and moved her fingers toward the sleeve of Casey's shirt. At the very last moment, just before the girl was able to touch the fabric, Casey moved her arm away and headed back toward the control panel.
“I guess we should head out and take a look around,” she continued, still tapping at a few of the buttons as if she hoped to clear the bug in the system. “Do you want to go together, or should we split up and get it done faster?”
She tapped again, before turning to Tom and seeing that he was staring pale-faced and shocked toward the doorway.
His eyes were fixed on the little girl.
“Tom?”
He turned to her, then back to the doorway, and then after a moment he stumbled to his feet.
“What's wrong
?” Casey asked.
“Nothing.”
“But you look -”
“It was just for a second,” he continued, grabbing his flashlight and ID card from the counter but fumbling and dropping them. Clearly flustered, he crouched down and picked them up. “I didn't sleep much after last night's shift. You know what it's like when you don't sleep properly. Things in the corner of your eye suddenly seem to take on a life of their own.”
“Are you sure you're -”
“Let's go together,” he added firmly, with a hint of desperation in his voice. “On the patrol, I mean. Let's not split up this time.”
Again, he glanced toward the doorway, but this time his eyes twitched as he looked around for any further sign of the girl.
She was still just outside the room, still watching the pair of them.
“It was nothing,” Tom added, taking a deep breath and then letting out a relieved sigh. “Let's have no more silliness. Next thing you know, you're going to get me seeing things.” Patting Casey's shoulder, he turned and headed out of the room, stepping straight past the dead little girl but seemingly no longer noticing her presence. Instead, he glanced both ways along the corridor, almost as if he expected her to be out there somewhere.
Casey watched him for a moment, before grabbing her flashlight and jacket. Heading over to the doorway, she took a moment to lock the security room, and then she and Tom began to make their way along the corridor. Already, Tom was trying to change the subject by rambling on about his new shed, and about all the times his wife had argued with him over the past few days, and about how she was always convinced she could hear burglars in the house at any time of the day or night. He seemed desperate to fill the silence, to keep Casey from asking any more about his moment of fear.
Behind them, the little girl had already begun to follow.
***
“I'll be there in just a moment!” Tom called out, as he sat on one of the seats near departure gate 15B. He watched as Casey made her way past the bookstore, and then he reached into his pocket with a trembling hand and took out a little bottle of garlic pills.