Eleven New Ghost Stories

by David Paul Nixon

  It took a few moments for me to realise something was wrong. The car was full of kids, teenagers – they didn’t look old enough to be driving. I saw them all turn towards Rose as they approached her very slowly. One was opening the sun roof.

  The car passed me, but I didn’t move – I watched. I saw one boy rise from the sun roof and the others lean out of the car windows. They threw eggs at Rose. They threw the eggs, then screamed, shouted and laughed at her.

  After the first hit, she rose her arm to cover her face – dropping one of her shopping bags. She was hit a couple of times. With the car moving on, she screamed at them: “You bastards! You fucking bastards!” Then she stepped on the shopping bag she had dropped – tripping and falling over it. The kids cheered once more, then revved up and sped away.

  I had to get involved – I couldn’t just leave her. I stopped the engine and ran across the road to her.

  “Are you all right?” I shouted.

  “Those little bastards!” She cried. “Fucking bastards!” There were tears in her eyes. There was egg yolk on her coat – front and back – and on her neck and hair. And to add to the misery, she’d crushed her own eggs – a squashed carton lay on the street surrounded by spilled, bruising fruit and a still-intact loaf.

  I tried to help her repack her bags, but one was torn. “The people around here. Bastards all of them.”

  “Let me help you.”

  “It’s all right, it’s all…” She broke into tears and slumped against a garden wall.

  I tried to put part of my arm around her but she shook it off. She reached into her pocket for a tissue while I stood over her, awkwardly.

  “I’ve got spare bags in the car,” I said after a moment. “Let’s get you home.”

  I remembered that she lived only around the corner. I left the car barely parked and went with her. As I walked with her there was a nagging feeling of doubt that I was walking into something bad. But this was basic human kindness – I wasn’t being a Florence Nightingale again. And yet I knew I was heading towards trouble. Catch 22 – but I was doing the right thing.

  I understood why she had so many locks on her door. She’d become the crazy old person in the neighbourhood the kids talked about and tormented. And with a place with so few things for young people to do… well, no wonder she felt vulnerable.

  It was a tired looking place and was long overdue for redecorating. The wallpaper was a nightmarish display of faded chintz; once garish, now just dowdy. It was starting to peel towards the top and at some places near the skirting. The carpet was a dulling purple, darker around the furniture and towards the walls where the sun nor feet could land upon it.

  She led me into the living room with few words. It too looked unchanged from a past era, when what seemed cheap and tacky now had once borne all the hallmarks of fashionable suburban living. A television the size of a tea chest lay on top of a chipboard cabinet wrapped in a plasticky wood finish. A fold out table with a doyley and fake flowers (dusty) lay in the window concave; the crowning touch was a hideous beige sofa, the seats long since sunk in and pock-marked with cigarette burns.

  She was composed again now, hard-faced once more. “I’ll stick my coat in the wash and clean myself up. Then I’ll make us some tea,” she said. Tea – the currency of British gratitude in the north as well as the south.

  The sofa didn’t look very inviting. There were marks in the carpet where an armchair had once been; four deep indents and a brighter square of carpet – no other seating options. There was a coffee table in the middle with a honeycomb of cup rings making its way from the wood surface onto a pile of assorted letters, a mixture of junk mail and bills. I could see the words ‘Final Demand’ several times.

  I’d seen worse. It was grim but mostly clean, if a bit dusty and a bit smelly. She went upstairs, presumably to the bathroom. I paced around a little – all I wanted to do was leave. I’d probably just leave as soon as she came downstairs.

  The walls were largely bare. A mirror with rusted edges hung at a slight angle. There had once been a picture behind the sofa, but that was long gone. There was a small sideboard, probably bought at a later date than the other furniture – it was darker and in better condition. There was a series of four mismatched picture frames on its top. One was larger than the others – it was silver; the real deal. It was tarnished, but attempts had been made to clean it. It was a posed photograph, a school photo.

  It was that girl: the one I’d seen in the alley by the shop. She looked positively luminous; a big happy grin, perfect smile, adorable blonde pigtails. Hardly at all like the sickly girl I’d seen before – but it was unmistakeably her.

  I heard the door move behind me. Rose came back into the room, surprising me a little. On seeing me looking at the photograph I saw her back stiffen.

  “Is this your grand-daughter?” I asked her.

  “No,” she said very sternly. “That’s my daughter.” Her nostrils flared, her lips curled in, her eyes opened wide.

  How was that possible? Rose was pretty old to have a six or seven year old child. I know they can do amazing things with IVF these days, but nothing about Rose’s situation made me think that any of that was likely.

  “She’s very beautiful,” I said. All the pictures on the sideboard were of her. But the others were all faded, old photographs. I wondered if she was delusional, but I’d seen the girl, walking around hardly much older than in the pictures. Something was very wrong here…

  There was a moment of silence.

  “I’ll get you that tea,” Rose said.

  I could’ve left it at that, I should’ve left it at that. But then I said – why did I say it? – I said: “I think I saw her the other day.”

  Rose stopped dead. She spun around; with a desperate look on her face, she said: “You seen her?”

  “About a week ago, I think.”

  Rose launched herself at me. She grabbed me by the sides of my cardigan; “Where did you see her?” She started to shake me; “Where did you see her!”

  “She was by the charity shop, in the alley – Rose, calm down!” I pushed her arms off me, but she just grabbed me higher up.

  “What was she doing coming to you!” She was shaking me again. “Why’d she come to you!” She pushed me away sharply. I tumbled over the arm of the sofa, landing on the sunken seats before rolling off onto the floor. I was lucky not to smack my head on the coffee table as I landed on the carpet.

  “I’m her mum, she should be coming to me. I’m her bloody mother!” She clumsily tried to kick me, but I moved my legs in time. I’d been in situations like this before, but never on my own. I was terrified.

  “Rose, you need to calm down. Stop shouting, Rose.”

  She didn’t know what to say for a moment; she backed away a little, as if she wasn’t sure what had come over her. I think she knew she’d crossed a line.

  “You get out,” she breathed. “Get out of this house!”

  She turned around and went fast into the kitchen. Petrified she might come out with a knife, I pulled myself up and made a dash for the door. Thank God she hadn’t done up all the locks – I undid the latch myself as I heard her footsteps coming after me. As I ran out into the road I heard her cry out to me:

  “If you see her, you come get me. You hear me! You bloody come and find me if you see her!”

  I ran back to my car and locked myself in and burst into tears. I don’t know how long I spent there, slumped against the steering wheel, crying. I thought I was passed all this, but obviously not. Just a prod and I was in pieces again.

  I’m being too hard on myself. I was feeling pretty shaken up; that woman really was crazy. She couldn’t possibly have a seven-year-old daughter. Perhaps she’d died a long time ago and she never got over it. But then how could I have seen the child in the alleyway? Maybe she was a different child? Yet she looked so much like the child in the picture, those old pictures…

  My head was hurting. I wiped away the tears with a tiss
ue. I ought to be angry at her, but losing your child was probably even more painful than losing your husband. And that hurt badly enough. And then prophetically, as if to make things worse, I got home and found a message on my answerphone. The lawyers…

  It was bad news. They weren’t going to say much over the phone, but they implied that it might go to court after all. That they had enough grounds to contest the will.

  I felt drained and slumped against the wall. Bastards. Christ, I didn’t even really want the money – I just didn’t want them to have it. They’d turned their backs on him when he needed them and now they thought they had a right to what he left behind? How low could people go?

  They were going to make out I’d taken advantage of him. Seduced him when he was at his most vulnerable. We didn’t even start seeing each other until after he was discharged. I was careful, damn careful about it. But they weren’t going to see it that way, were they? My bosses didn’t see it that way. Practically forced me to leave. I risked everything because of him, and then he goes off and he bloody well kills himself.

  What did he think? He was saving me heartache? Saving me pain? He could’ve fought it; it didn’t have to end like that. And look what a mess he left. What a state he’d left me in.

  I opened a bottle of wine and drank most of it in silence. I spent the evening lying on the floor and staring at the ceiling. That mad bitch had hurt my shoulder. It ached every time I lifted the glass or bottle to my lips. Christ, Adrian, couldn’t you have held on that bit longer?

  If only I’d been there. I never thought that he could just give up like that. They can fight these things; a prognosis is only an educated guess. He didn’t even leave a note. He couldn’t face me in the end. He didn’t just want to save me pain – he didn’t want to face me. Tell me he was throwing in the towel. It was one tragedy too many. As if being schizophrenic wasn’t enough for a man to take.

  I stayed indoors for two days. Cancelled an afternoon shift at the shop. Lied and said I had a migraine. I just didn’t want to move. I wanted to find somewhere to hide. I spent most of one day under the bed. Hiding in the darkness. I didn’t eat. I drank very little.

  I ran a bath on the second day. Spent most of the day in it. Kept putting my head under the water to see how long I could hold my breath. I don’t even know what I was thinking. I just felt heavy. Simple tasks were too difficult. Simple choices were too hard. Bubble bath or no bubble bath? Radio on or radio off? I chose no in both cases, but only because I never made a decision in the first place. Too much time just passed by.

  Strangely enough, it was a call again from the lawyers that brought me out of my stupor. It was a reminder that I couldn’t hide. And that there was still a vestige of anger in me that wanted to take on those bastards. There was still some fight left in me.

  I called them back just before they closed for the day. They were going to send me some papers, which I would need to read and then go over with them point-by-point to challenge which parts I felt were incorrect, false, unfair, unjustified, etc.

  Something to look forward to…

  I was back in the charity shop on Wednesday. I didn’t mention anything about my relapse to Joyce, but I had to tell her about Crazy Rose. I’d been outside to throw some rubbish away, just after I’d got there in the morning, and I knew someone was there in the alley. I just caught them shuffle back around the corner when they saw me. I knew it was Rose; she was searching where I said I’d seen the girl.

  “I told you she was crazy”.

  “She needs help,” I said. We don’t use words like crazy in the mental health profession. “You should’ve seen the place; it was like it hadn’t changed for twenty years. She bought kids’ gloves here the other day.”

  “It’s so sad, losing your child. But didn’t you say you’d seen her outside?”

  “Only thought I’d seen her. I must’ve been wrong, those were old photos, and you’ve seen how old she is.” Something didn’t add up. I could’ve been wrong, but I didn’t think I was.

  “Alice will know,” said Joyce. “She’s the librarian. And the local historian. She’s got the dirt on everyone. Biggest gossip in town, and you know how they love to gossip around here. She runs the book group; I’ve been telling you you should go.”

  “When is it?”

  “Tomorrow night. Still time for you to go over the material.” She got up and scoured the book shelves. After a few moments of searching she plucked out a copy of Life of Pi. “Not a bad choice this time.”

  “That’s handy; I’ve read it.”

  As I’d guessed, the book group consisted of only ten minutes of book talk followed by a free-roaming discussion on everything from Brangelina to local teen pregnancies and who the fathers were. Alice was a woman with glasses much wider than her head. She was long-necked with a penetrating stare. She was like a woodland creature scanning its environment, in this case looking for little gossipy titbits to feast on. Her eyes roamed around the group; she dipped in and out of the conversations, entering when they got juicy, exiting when the scandals died down.

  We were going to discuss Rose when all the other women had left. She gave me a wink to suggest that this was something big, beyond mere book group chitter-chatter. As soon as everyone else had left, she practically skipped past the bookshelves to get her records.

  After a few moments Alice returned with a large red ring binder, A3 size, which she placed down on the table with a sense of relish.

  “Nowadays I don’t usually bother keeping the newspapers, not with the internet. But we used to cut out all the local stories.”

  The binder was a giant scrap book; thousands of stories had been diligently cut out and stuck inside. She had bookmarked the page she wanted to show me. She picked up a large clutch of papers, lifted them over and dropped them down on the desk with a thud.

  What she revealed made my eyes open wide:

  LIGHTNING STRIKES SCHOOLGIRL DEAD

  Me and Joyce were speechless. It was one of several headlines – the story was unusual enough to have reached the nationals: Scottish girl killed by lightning; Child killed by playground lightning; Lightning strikes girl dead in playground. Only the local paper carried it as a front page story. In a rather tasteless image they had the girl’s picture superimposed next to a picture of fork lightning badly pasted over a picture of a school playground. I recognised the school; it was on the other side of town; I passed it occasionally.

  “______ was in mourning yesterday after a six-year-old was struck by lightning and killed in the playground in front of her classmates. Chloe Rutter was leaving school when she was inexplicably killed as she waited for her mother to take her home.”

  It was her: the girl I’d seen in the alley. How was that possible? Her name was Chloe; I hadn’t even known her name.

  “My sister-in-law was there,” said Alice. “They’d just let the wee ones go for the day. And they were just heading across the playground. Little Chloe, she sees her mum, Rose, and she goes to run to her. And Rose opens her arms open wide, ready to catch her and pick her up.” Alice did the motions. “And just as she was running to her, barely a few yards away, bang!”

  She struck the fist of her right hand into her left palm. “Lightning struck – it came right down from the sky. There was a big flash, and poor little Chloe, she fell dead just feet from her mum, all burnt-up. Smoke were coming off her. Dead, instantly. Old Nora, she said she’d never seen anything like it. No one had; it wasn’t even barely raining.”

  I looked at the paper’s date. Christ, that was 26 years ago. That meant that Chloe was older than I was! Would’ve been older than I was. God, I’d seen a ghost. I couldn’t believe it. I’d seen a ghost. And talked to a ghost!

  “That’s horrible,” said Joyce, scanning her way through the press cuttings.

  “It’s a terrible thing to lose a child,” said Alice. “But to lose one like that. Right in front of your eyes. And it must be, what? A million-to-one chance, getting struck by l
ightning?”

  “It’s unbelievable,” I said. But it was well documented. It was the end of the school day; all the mums and dads were there. And the other children.

  “It happened in a flash,” a parent was quoted as saying. “One moment she was there, running to her mam, and then she was gone. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “What happened to her? Rose, I mean.”

  “She went mad with grief, didn’t she? Imagine it, losing you own daughter in front of you, killed no closer to you than you are to me now.

  “She disappeared for quite a while. Institutionalised I mean. No one saw her for months. Her husband looked after the house; he started drinking. They didn’t even have the funeral until she got back. And then things settled down for a bit. But they’d have these rows, these terrible rows. Then one day, he left. Never seen around these parts again. Just vanished.

  Rose, she never came to terms with it. Some people reckon she still thinks she’s alive. She used to talk like she was still alive, and when you tried to tell her Chloe was gone, she’d get furious. People stopped talking to her altogether, they got afraid of her. She’s mad, completely barmy.”

  I looked at Joyce and Joyce looked back at me. I’d seen her. I’d seen a dead girl.

  “She bought kids’ gloves off me the other day,” I said.

  “Sad really. But what can you do? She won’t let you help her. Even after all this time she can’t come to terms with it. Can’t get over the shock.”

  It was tensely quiet in the car as I drove Joyce back home.

  “It couldn’t have been her,” I said, not believing myself. I wondered if somehow, I’d seen the newspaper story before, somehow dug that picture from deep within my memory and imagined the girl behind the shop. But of course I hadn’t; I was five when that happened and would hardly have been big into newspapers.

  “I’ve heard some strange stuff in my time,” said Joyce. “But I haven’t heard anything like this.”