The ghost Rachel had spoken to also said he knew one spirit who had simply chosen to stand by the road where he had been killed, screaming at passers-by. Why ghosts stayed where they did was very individual to them. Would Kayleigh haunt the woods or her home? Or maybe she wasn’t grounded, but was one of the lucky ones who didn’t haunt anywhere and were whisked off to heaven, hell or wherever.
As soon as Rachel arrived at the edge of Darkfoot Wood, she began to think it was a stupid idea to be wandering about in the vain hope that this girl’s ghost would just appear. The place itself was a well-known beauty spot, used by runners and dog walkers. It covered about 200 acres, and it was easy to get lost there. Clutching a folder of papers, given to her by D I Johnson, she went through the main entrance and walked to a grassy area further along, where Kayleigh had been seen going into the wood from the CCTV camera, positioned on the road. As Rachel passed the spot where the doomed girl had been, only a fortnight before, she looked back at the camera in the distance, which was watching everything from atop its pole, then she turned back and entered the wood.
She had heard of the place but had never been there; she had no reason to. Surrounded by high trees and the sound of the breeze, she walked on; she was passed about every ten minutes or so by a runner or a family out for the day. It wasn’t scary at all. This must have been the path that Kayleigh had walked along, the policeman’s map said so, and Rachel felt she would have seen something or had some kind of odd feeling by now, but there was nothing. Nothing came to her at all about the missing girl.
As she followed the path, she became aware of spirit people in the woods, standing in amongst the trees and working. Looking more closely, she could see they were mostly men, with a couple of youths, sawing and chopping at trees. Dressed in loose, stained shirts, tattered trousers and wearing battered, leather hats, they carried on sombrely at their task. One or two looked up, but the rest carried on, fervent in whatever work they were doing with the trees.
As she walked, she saw plenty of spirits – some men in Edwardian dress; a lady in what looked like 1960s clothing, with a small dog; and a stout man with a huge moustache, shouting at a spectral cat that was sitting high in one of the branches of an oak – but absolutely nothing that looked like it had anything to do with Kayleigh.
She hurried to Shore Moat; it was just past there that the blood and items had been found, so maybe she would have some more luck nearer to the murder scene. The moat in daytime, although lit by the sunlight filtering through the trees, had a slightly sinister air about it. She had read some information that the dark-green, sludgy water once encircled some kind of fortified building, hundreds of years ago. Now all that was left was the mainly oblong moat, about 300 feet across, and an island of land in the middle that could be accessed by a small causeway. The rest of the area was largely given up to the wild, although it was maintained now and again, so it was accessible.
Rachel stood about two feet from the water’s edge. Being dark and uninviting, the moat had probably been much more well defined than this when it had guarded the building; but now, after centuries, nature had encroached and made it a slimy shadow of its former self, like a top athlete, withered by age and now unable to even move from a bed.
She looked about, saw nothing, and so sat down on a tree stump. The sound of voices caught her ear as she watched two girls, crossing the little causeway on to the island. Dressed in a slightly hippie fashion, they had ribbons in their hands. Some of the trees around the moat had been decorated with little offerings and had ribbons tied to twigs. She wondered what that was all about.
Then Rachel saw her. Standing on the island, right by the edge of the water, and staring straight at her, was a young girl, who was wearing a large, dirty, white coat with fake leopard spots on it, and a tight, blue dress. She was just standing there, with her head to one side, her face pale, her hair stuck to her cheeks and forehead, and her eyes dark. And just staring. Rachel couldn’t take her eyes off the girl. She tore them away to quickly scan the papers given to her, concerning what Kayleigh had been wearing when she had gone missing. Her finger turned the papers back and forth till she saw “Light coat with fake leopard-skin print, blue dress.”
“Christ!” Rachel exclaimed.
She looked up again. Gone; the figure was gone. Scrambling up, she looked about, then she walked hurriedly along the causeway to the island where the figure had been. When she was standing right on the spot, there was nothing – even the girls with the ribbons had gone.
Unexpectedly, there in the woods, the figure reappeared again. This time, she was on the outer bank, across the water from Rachel, standing with half of her body behind a tree, again with her head inclined. Her skin was porcelain white and her eyes kohled, almost like a goth.
This time, Rachel fixed the girl in her sights before walking slowly back along the path; right now, she was a little afraid. Since her ability to see the dead had manifested, she had encountered lots of them and, to be honest, had felt no fear whatsoever; they were who they were – just ordinary people, albeit dead – but she had never felt under any kind of threat when seeing them. However, today was different. As she approached and got about fifteen feet away from the girl, the full horror began to reveal itself; she felt her heart thumping so fast that she began to find it hard to breathe.
“H-hello,” Rachel uttered as she drew nearer.
The girl looked skeletally thin, and her cheek bones pressed out from what looked like a slightly puffed-up face. Her eyes remained unmoving. The girl then stepped behind the tree in a strangely jerky movement, and was gone.
Rachel stopped dead, now more scared than ever. She wondered if she should walk up and just look behind the tree, but then what would happen if the ghost – or whatever it was – came at her from behind? She didn’t like this at all, and every part of her body screamed at her to get out of that place as fast as she could.
She walked closer, slowly; all her nerves were a-twitch for a movement or sound, but none came. Now at the tree, she peered behind it at a snail’s pace, ready to attack or fight if whatever it was jumped out at her, but it had gone. It was not there anymore.
She sighed heavily and realised all of a sudden that she felt light headed. The feeling grew, like a gnawing sickness in her stomach; something was wrong – very wrong. She became aware of a pushing sensation bubbling into the back of her head. Slowly, she turned around to face what her soul was telling her to see, and there it was, for less than half a second, sitting in the branch of a large tree. The thing, the ape-like creature she had seen in her dreams, was sitting there, not only obscuring all light from behind but positively absorbing it into itself, forming a hairy, large blob of darkness. It shifted slightly, and reached up to a branch above with a huge, hairy arm, then it pulled itself out of sight in a flash.
What the hell was that? She took a step back, then felt the feeling of panic ebb away slowly.
It wasn’t clear who was more surprised: Rachel on seeing the thing, whatever it was, or the creature itself, knowing it had been properly observed, for the first time in centuries, by a mortal.
Chapter 23
Andy pushed his way up the stairs to his room, carrying three large bags. The front-door key swung from between his teeth as he opened his bedroom door and, gratefully, put the bags on the bed. After removing his coat, he began to empty out the contents slowly. A new laptop in a box and some computer paraphernalia came out of one bag, a smart leather coat came from another, and a pair of designer trainers, ornately boxed up, came from the last.
“Sweet,” he declared.
He rubbed his hands together, and reached instinctively for the laptop first, but then heard Mrs Braithwaite call him from downstairs.
“Andy… Andy, love…” Her voice sounded slightly faltering, so he knew something was wrong.
“Coming…” He frowned, opened up the box that contained the trainers, had
a good look at them, grunted, put them back down on the bed and then descended the stairs.
Mrs Braithwaite was at the bottom, holding on to the stair rail. “Your mother is here,” she said simply, fiddling with her hearing aid as if turning it back up again.
“Jesus.” He immediately felt his heart sink.
“No… just your mother,” she replied. “I am going for some fresh air in the garden; will you be OK?” She touched his arm.
“Yeah, sure; you go.” He thought it best that Mrs Braithwaite stayed out of this.
He took a deep breath and entered the living room.
His mother was standing, looking at the curtains closely. She was in her sixties, skinny, and with heavy make-up, thin red-painted lips, tight-fitting clothes, quite fashionable boots and a shock of blonde, permed hair. Mutton dressed as lamb, as Mrs Braithwaite always said.
Without looking up, she said, “God knows the last time these curtains were cleaned. They are filthy.”
He just stood there, considering his answer, when she turned.
“I see that you have drawn some girl into this ghost nonsense that you do. I read it in the paper; you have got some woman, saying she can see dead people to line your pocket. It’s shameful,” she stated.
“She can see the dead. It’s not a lie,” Andy explained.
“Yes, of course.” She sat down heavily in an armchair. “I haven’t heard from you for weeks, not a word. I am your mother, Andrew, and the least you could do is pick up the phone to see how I am.”
“You can always ring me; I have been busy.” The truth was Andy didn’t actually want to ring a person who would not only begin a row at the drop of a hat, but who would also unleash a whole torrent of abuse on him. He wasn’t into masochism the last time he checked.
“Too busy to look in on your mother? That’s disgusting.” She got up and walked to the window. “So, I see you still haven’t got a proper job yet. Dressed like that, it’s no wonder employers don’t want to know you.”
“Was there a reason you came here?” Andy was growing tired of this now familiar charade.
“To see you and to find out why you still ponce off Mrs Braithwaite – living here, probably for free – when you could live with me; I have plenty of space.”
“I pay rent and help out around the house. Besides, it’s best we live apart.”
“You only have a problem living under my roof because you fail to obey my simple rules.”
“Like coming in by a certain time every night and not drinking? I am over-forty, Mum; I can pretty much stay out late and drink a beer if I want.”
She picked up her coat and bag. “Remember I am your mother, Andrew; I won’t always be here.”
Slowly, she walked to the door and then paused. “You were such a good boy when you were younger, well behaved and polite, then you went to that secondary school and you became horrible. It killed your father, you know, the stress you put us through; it’s why he had the heart attack so young. That’s down to you, I am afraid.”
He stood there silent and still. There was so much he could have said in response, but he instantly felt like he was a young child again, being scolded and told he wasn’t good enough, and he just could not pluck up the courage to respond at all. He hated feeling weak like this and wished he could give it to her with both barrels, but, of course, he never did.
“You could have been someone, Andrew, but no, you don’t get a real job, you dress like a tramp and live here, badgering that dopey old bat Mrs Braithwaite, who is the only one stupid enough to take you in. Now, this crap about having a girl working with you who can see ghosts – what utter useless claptrap; by the looks of it, you have gone quite mad. But, to be honest, it’s all I expect from you now.” With that, she opened the door, walked out into the hallway and was gone.
He sat down. Her rules, her house; yes, he remembered those rules all too well; just a single step out of line and that was it. For some reason, an incident that occurred when he was about seven pushed itself forcibly back into his mind. He had been given a tank of stick insects from his school; they were funny things that looked like tree twigs, but they were easy to care for. His father had said he could have them, but, of course, his mother hated them. His father loved all animals, and he would go to great lengths to rescue a spider in the house or a worm, found on the path; but not his mother. Squash, squash, squash – she would kill anything she found that she didn’t like. One day, a few of the insects escaped from the tank. He had only found out when he had returned from school for his mother to present to him their broken, crushed, dead bodies on a piece of newspaper. She had killed them all, saying they were horrible and she didn’t want them in the house.
He had cried for a week after that, and learnt that it was pointless to have live animals in the house again. He was past forty, yet he still remembered that incident with stomach-churning accuracy. There were many, many other such incidents.
When Andy was seventeen, his father had died of a sudden heart attack; he was 51 years old. That was the tipping point for Andy. His father liked a drink, and he had been very stressed at work; now Andy was older, he could reflect on this and understand that these were probably the reasons his father had been ill, not because of him. But, after his father’s death, his mother would always say Andy had caused the stress that had killed him, and Andy resented this. He had been a good person; as far as he could see, he had studied hard at school, never caused problems or hung out in gangs, didn’t touch drugs, and got quite a few qualifications when he had left formal education, but nothing was ever good enough for his mother.
He had come to the conclusion that his mother had bounced a lot of her anger off his father – belittling him, rowing with him and moaning at him consistently – so when his father died, there was only one other person left there to take the shit: Andy. She started on Andy, and, unlike his father, he didn’t have the time or patience to deal with it. Maybe that did make him a bad person, who knows? But he did know he had moved out of the family home as soon as he could, never, ever to return again. He had tried to return a couple of times in the past, but both times had been disastrous; the last time he left with her actually screaming at him in the street, throwing his clothes after him as he hurried down the road.
Screw that, he was never going back. Rachel had told him that her parents had died in an accident, so she had not had to deal with such issues most of her life. For a second, just one second, Andy imagined life without his mother, as if something had happened to her. The thought was broken as the door to the hallway opened and Mrs Braithwaite peeped in.
“Are you all right, love?” she asked.
“Yes, fine,” replied Andy.
Unexpectedly, he felt his mobile phone buzz inside his pocket; it made him jump slightly. Fumbling, he fished it out and looked at the screen; it was a text from Rachel, which simply said ‘I saw the girl at the park; we should go back there at some point’. He texted ‘OK’ in reply, then put the phone back.
“I am absolutely fine, Mrs Braithwaite,” he said, and he hugged her lightly as he passed her in the doorway and walked up the stairs.
Chapter 24
A whole week passed before they could return to Darkfoot Wood. Rachel had caught a nasty cold, which had spread to her chest and lungs, making it difficult to breathe; her eyes were also swollen shut, which had made everything more difficult. This was the first time in years she had felt so bad. Why had she got so ill now? It had made her very depressed.
Her health had been, as usual, touch and go. It was easier now that she wasn’t working as a teacher, as when she was sick previously, she would have had to muddle through at school, or call in sick and suffer the stress of having a review meeting with Mr Andrews. Now, she didn’t have that, but she found not having a normal job was making her lazier and also more self-aware, which wasn’t a good thing. Having very little to do ea
ch day left her more exhausted than when she knew she had things she had to get completed; maybe it was boredom or depression. She also worried about the work situation; there was no way doing this silly ghost investigation thing would give her enough money to pay her rent long term. Andy had told her that he had signed off the dole, so confident was he that a living could be made from it, but she wasn’t so sure. Rachel had paid this month’s rent, but all she had in the bank was one further month, then that was it; she would have to go to the benefits office and claim destitution.
Due to spending the week unwell, she had been given some time to think. Rachel had wanted to get back to the woods and take Andy with her, so he could bring his equipment or do whatever he wanted to do to locate Kayleigh. Maybe, by working together, they could find her remains or track down who had killed her.
Lying in bed, she had thought long and hard about all the possibilities. If she could see the dead and speak to them, which she knew she could, then, in theory, nothing could stop her from maybe looking into old, unsolved murder cases. Whilst browsing the internet, she had been surprised to discover that there were lots of unresolved murders worldwide. In theory, all she needed to do was establish contact with the dead person, then just ask them if they knew where their mortal remains had been dumped and who had killed them. It sounded so simple, but surely it wouldn’t be that easy? She was also certain that she wasn’t the first person in history who could see and speak to the dead with little issue. It was an exciting and certainly scary time. Could it really be as easy as that?
*
It was a Tuesday morning when she finally felt well enough to meet with Andy outside Darkfoot Wood, by the same entrance that was overseen by the CCTV camera that had captured Kayleigh’s last fateful walk home on the night she was killed. He turned up – as usual, on his rusty bike – with a holdall swinging from the handlebars. After dismounting, he chained the bike to a metal fence and, without another word, they headed into the trees.
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