by Emma Timpany
‘It was perfect,’ Jane said. ‘Peaceful. Not a single ghost anywhere in sight.’
‘Sounds boring,’ Ed teased.
‘No, it was very exciting, and I’ll tell you all about it on the way home.’ Jane turned halfway towards the road again.
‘Or you could show me …’
‘No.’
‘Oh, come on. I’m here now.’ Before Jane could say another word in argument, Ed had skipped across the car park and straight through the solid wooden door of the jail.
Jane groaned. She looked out at the road and thought about leaving anyway. She could just go home. Ed would probably get bored after a few minutes and come after her. She might be in bed already before he even realised she wasn’t coming. There was nothing stopping her from just leaving him there.
Ed was waiting on the other side of the door when Jane opened it, a self-satisfied smile on his face.
‘What if someone comes in and sees me talking to you?’ Jane demanded in a whisper.
‘Isn’t talking to ghosts literally your job?’ Ed asked, whispering himself even though no one else could hear him. Jane paused. She hated it when Ed was right.
‘You’re the worst,’ Jane snapped.
Ed silently slapped his hand on his chest, right where his heart would have been if he still had one. His chest still moved as though he did; it was eerie when Jane thought about it for too long. ‘You wound me, Jane. Tell me you don’t mean it.’
‘I won’t.’
‘All right, then.’ Ed’s hand fell back to his side. ‘Give me the ghost tour to make it up to me.’
Ed straightened his tattered brown jacket, smoothing it unnecessarily with his fingers. Jane spent a lot of time looking at Ed’s hands. He could pick things up when he wanted to. He could pass his hands through walls as though they were made of nothing and he could use them to lift the sofa for Jane when she vacuumed. She had never spent enough time with a ghost before Ed to notice things like that. Sometimes she made him pick things up and then pass a hand through them in the same minute, just to see him do it.
Working nights as the jail’s resident medium meant she didn’t have a whole lot of other things to occupy her time.
‘Fine.’ Ed grinned widely again but Jane held up a hand to stop him before he could get too excited. ‘I’ll show you around but I’m not doing the whole tour. I will not commune with imaginary ghosts in front of you.’
Ed pretended to consider this for a moment, pallid lips pursed and dark eyes narrowed. ‘Okay. Let’s go.’ Ed held his arm out, elbow crooked, as though he expected Jane to entwine her own arm with his and lead him away.
Jane shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans. ‘This way.’
Jane had only been working at the jail for a few months. It had been a tip from a cousin with similar abilities; the most haunted place in Great Britain wasn’t actually haunted at all and they were looking for someone new to pretend that it was. Jane’s cousin had gone for an interview first, really believing that she might be able to use the job to help some poor abandoned souls find peace. When she had realised there weren’t any poor abandoned souls to be found, she had recommended Jane immediately.
It had seemed too good to be true for Jane. She had no interest in helping abandoned souls if she could avoid it, but she certainly had enough experience to convince people that that was exactly what she did every night. And if they wanted to pay her then who was she to complain? She had even managed to find a small house for rent, fully furnished, just a twenty-minute walk from the jail; most importantly, it had been built only eleven years ago. The chances of anyone having died in it were so slim Jane had signed the lease without even visiting it in person.
So Jane had only had herself to blame when she showed up with all of her belongings and found Ed perched on the arm of the sofa. In her shock, Jane had screamed and dropped a box of books on her foot. In his, Ed had fallen straight through the sofa and the floor beneath it.
Now, Ed was standing in front of one of the mannequins in the jail’s historical exhibition, his nose two inches away from its wax face.
‘These things are creepy.’ This particular mannequin had its hands tied behind its back, waiting forever for another mannequin to put its head through a noose. Jane had to agree with Ed. The mannequins all had these buggy eyes that followed you around the room. She couldn’t really blame anyone for believing the place was haunted with those things everywhere you looked. ‘So, what do you do in here then?’ Ed asked, slipping through the wooden gate that was supposed to keep people away from the exhibition.
Jane gestured vaguely down the hall in the direction of the cells with the hidden fans. ‘Blast them with cold air and keep them talking so they don’t hear the fans.’ Ed started walking towards the cells in question, backwards so that he could still look at Jane while she explained. Jane followed. ‘I tell them about prisoners who were kept in these cells and their imaginations fill in the blanks.’
‘What prisoners?’ Ed asked.
Jane shrugged. ‘I make them up. Men who killed their wives, women wrongly accused, children born in the cells who died of starvation. I try to figure out what ghost they want and give it to them.’ The lot who had just left had been very pleased with their lady serial killer.
Ed stopped suddenly. So did Jane. ‘What ghost would you make up for me?’ he asked, smirking again.
‘A really annoying one.’
‘More annoying than me?’
‘My imagination isn’t that good.’
Ed’s laugh was like static on Jane’s skin.
They kept going, Ed asking questions about what Jane did here, and what she told the guests here, only coming to a stop again when they reached one of the more popular exhibits. This time the mannequin was a young woman with long brunette hair, endlessly about to drop one child down a well, another clinging to her skirts.
‘Selina Wadge. She was a real prisoner.’
‘I know.’ Ed was still, his voice quiet. ‘I remember.’
They had never talked about Ed’s life, or how he died, or how he came to be haunting a house built at least one hundred years too late for him to have ever lived in it. From his tattered jacket and patched-up trousers, Jane had guessed that he had probably been alive in the late nineteenth century, and she knew that ghosts could haunt people instead of places, sometimes even families down the generations, and get stuck when the last person died. She had never asked if that was what had happened to Ed though. For some reason, with him, it didn’t seem polite.
‘During the day they have a film they project,’ Jane said instead, ‘with an actress playing her.’ Ed nodded but Jane didn’t think he was really listening. ‘Did you know her?’ she asked, her voice almost a whisper.
‘No.’ Ed smiled, and shot her a sidelong look as if to say that not everyone from the nineteenth century knew each other. ‘I just remember hearing about it.’
‘People think they can feel her on the third and fourth floors but there’s nothing there. It’s just this place.’
Ed turned away from the exhibit. He opened his mouth as if to say something but his eyes passed over Jane to a spot somewhere behind her. ‘Are you sure about that?’ he asked.
Jane felt something drop in the pit of her stomach. The room had gone cold. Or maybe that was just the dread building up, freezing her from the inside. Slowly, she turned around. At the other end of the hallway stood a young woman in a long dress, faintly glowing and staring, not at Jane, but at Ed.
Jane swore under her breath. The woman’s dark eyes flickered to Jane’s face. The two of them looked at each other across the hallway for barely a moment. Then the woman turned and fled, her skirt billowing behind her.
Jane swore louder this time. ‘This is your fault,’ she said, pointing a finger at Ed.
Ed’s mouth fell open. ‘How is it my fault?’
‘You attracted her here with your … ghost energy.’
‘My ghost energy?’
&nbs
p; ‘Yes.’
‘Isn’t it more likely that she’s been here for a long time, hiding, waiting for someone who could help her, and seeing you interact with a real spirit has encouraged her to show herself to you?’
‘Either way, it’s your fault.’ This was exactly why Jane hadn’t wanted Ed in the jail in the first place. She knew something like this would happen.
Jane was so angry she didn’t even wait to see if Ed was following before she took off after the woman. Of course, by the time she reached the end of the hallway, there was no longer any trace of the new ghost.
‘She could be anywhere.’
As if on cue, Jane heard a bang from upstairs, so loud it made her jump. Dust rained down from the ceiling above. She took the stairs two at a time.
‘What are you going to do?’ Ed asked, right behind her.
‘I’m going to get rid of her.’
They found the woman in front of one of the cells on the fourth floor. The wooden gate that should have been in the doorway of the cell was lying on the floor, in pieces, next to the glowing figure. She was staring into the small room, standing perfectly still. The air was so cold Jane could see her breath forming clouds in front of her.
‘Why is she glowing?’ Ed whispered. ‘I don’t glow.’ He was standing so close that Jane almost thought she could feel his breath on the back of her neck.
‘She’s a different kind of ghost.’
‘What kind?’
The woman turned slowly. Her dress barely moved. Unlike Ed, she floated above the ground.
‘Tricky,’ Jane answered.
The woman was staring at them now, her expression entirely unreadable. A chill went down Jane’s spine. It had been a long time since she’d done this.
‘Selina?’ she asked, taking a single step towards the woman. The woman tilted her head to the side, her unblinking eyes still fixed on Jane. Jane took the woman’s stillness as a sign that it was okay to keep moving slowly towards her.
‘I don’t think it’s her,’ Ed said. ‘She looks too young.’ Now that they were closer, Jane could see that he was right. The woman she had mistaken for Selina Wadge was barely a woman at all. She had a soft, round face, and her dark eyes were wide and curious. She didn’t look any older than fourteen.
‘What’s your name?’ Jane asked. The girl’s frowning mouth stayed shut. ‘I’m Jane and this is Ed.’ Jane stopped halfway down the hallway, not wanting to go any further until she was sure the girl wouldn’t rip off any more gates or flee again. ‘I can help you. Will you tell me your name?’
‘I don’t remember it,’ the girl said. Her voice was deeper than Jane had expected – husky, like the jazz singers Jane’s grandmother had loved.
‘Okay.’ If this girl truly didn’t remember who she was, then this was going to be even trickier than Jane had thought. ‘Do you know where you are?’
‘I’ve been away.’ The girl switched her gaze to Ed. ‘You’re dead too.’
‘Oh. Yes. I am.’ Ed stepped out from behind Jane. The girl mirrored the movement, lifting her own feet a little too high, like a child just learning to walk.
‘Is she helping you?’ the girl asked, her wide eyes focused on Ed’s face again, rather than his feet.
Ed looked at Jane, puffed out his cheeks, and thought about his answer. ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘In a way.’
Jane didn’t have time for this ghostly bonding. The sky was already starting to lighten outside the jail’s small windows and she had to get rid of this girl before anyone else arrived. She wanted to get home before someone found that broken gate and started asking questions.
‘Do you know why you’re here?’ Jane asked.
‘No. I don’t know any of this. Why do you keep asking me questions?’ The girl’s frown deepened, her eyebrows lowered. Jane took a step back.
‘I want to help you move on from here.’
‘To where?’
‘To the next place.’ That was what Jane’s grandmother had always said. That was what she had taught her granddaughters to say. None of it ever sounded quite right coming out of Jane’s mouth.
‘I don’t want to go anywhere.’ The glow around the girl started to intensify, and her mouth began to twist further down. Jane fell to the floor instinctively, her knees crashing painfully on the concrete. She curled up into a ball and pressed her hands over her ears just in time.
The girl let out a deafening, high-pitched scream and for the second time that night Jane heard the sound of glass smashing, but this time she was pretty sure it was a window or two.
Jane waited until she was certain that the ghost was quite finished before uncurling from her defensive ball. Ed was still standing in exactly the same place, but the girl was gone.
‘What was that?’ Ed asked, still staring at the spot where the other ghost had been.
‘A poltergeist.’ Jane brushed the dust from her knees and swore again. ‘I shouldn’t have asked her all those questions. I’ve just made it worse.’
‘You barely spoke to her,’ Ed argued. ‘She was a brat.’
Jane looked down at her watch. She only had an hour and a half until the jail opened for visitors. There was no way she could leave a ghost that angry and confused wandering around in a place that would soon be full of families and tourists. The girl had already broken one gate and at least one window, and Jane knew that would barely be the start. But if the girl couldn’t even remember her own name then Jane didn’t stand a chance of finding out how to move her on before opening time.
‘So,’ Ed asked, ‘what now?’
‘There’s one other thing I could try.’ It was something her grandmother had shown her how to do, only in extreme circumstances. It was incredibly risky and Jane had never done it on her own before but soon people would start to flood in. ‘I need you to get me a few things.’
It didn’t take Ed long to get everything that Jane needed. Speed was one of the perks of being dead. You didn’t have to worry about bumping into anything. Jane sat on the floor, her legs crossed, with the items Ed had retrieved spread out in front of her. There was a plastic bottle filled with holy water taken from the nearest church, a small pile of dirt with a single butter-yellow dandelion poking out of it, two candles stolen from a shop in town, and a human thigh bone, which Ed would return to the grave he had borrowed it from as soon as they were finished. He wasn’t particularly happy about that one and Jane had to admit she didn’t much like it either, but her grandmother had always used a human bone and Jane wasn’t sure it would work with one from any other animal.
‘So what exactly are you doing?’ Ed asked. He was standing a little way away, watching Jane unscrew the blue plastic cap of the holy water.
‘I’m going to open a door.’
‘To heaven?’
‘To wherever people go when they aren’t here any more. Then either our new friend is going to walk through it willingly or I will push her.’ Jane checked her watch. She looked up at Ed. He was twisting the ends of his jacket in his hands, his lips a thin line. He was nervous. It made Jane feel a little better to know she wasn’t the only one.
Jane had offered to help Ed move on just once, on the first day they met. Well, more like she had begged him to let her help, so she could have back the quiet, ghostless existence she wanted. He had declined. He had said he didn’t know why he was still there but he didn’t mind it. He was sure he would move on one day, when he was ready, and in the meantime, he promised not to be any trouble. That was the last time they had talked about it. Perhaps she should have offered again since then, but Jane had grown so used to Ed being around that not having him there had become unthinkable.
She thought about telling him that once the door was open he would only have to walk through it. She thought about telling him that he should leave now and wait for her at home to be safe. In the end, she simply closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and lit the candles.
The door opened with a sound like stone being torn in two. All the air
seemed to rush from the room and a different air swept back in, hotter and colder all at once. Jane’s heart beat in her throat. She had done it. She could feel it on her skin, a charge one thousand times more powerful than even Ed’s laugh, and the smell of dust and fire that she remembered so well from watching her grandmother do this many years ago.
She never thought she would be able to do it alone.
Jane blinked and the poltergeist was in front of her, looking into the door. She could feel it too. It was so powerful it had drawn her to it. Jane didn’t dare look at Ed. She was about to say something to the girl, to start a speech about how she simply had to go through the door to be free, or something like that anyway, but before Jane could get the words out, someone stepped out of the door.
Then another someone.
Before Jane knew it, she was surrounded by dozens of various, confused ghosts.
‘Is this supposed to happen?’ Ed whispered, close to Jane’s ear. She was so shocked that she hadn’t even noticed him moving nearer.
‘No,’ Jane squeaked. She didn’t know what to do. This had never happened when her grandmother did it. She cleared her throat. ‘Excuse me.’ Her words were drowned out by the sound of ghosts chatting to one another. They didn’t even seem to notice her sitting there.
Sunlight was streaming through the windows now, thick bands of it illuminating every single ghost who wasn’t supposed to be there.
‘Help,’ Jane pleaded, turning her head so fast that her nose passed through Ed’s. He nodded and took a deep, useless breath, before standing up.
‘Hello,’ Ed said, loud enough for everyone to hear. ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ he continued as the chatting started to die down. ‘But I’m afraid you’ve all made a wrong turn, so if you wouldn’t mind all just heading back through that door –’
‘Hang on,’ a man in a cloth cap with only one visible tooth lisped. ‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Edward but that’s really not important. If you could all just go on straight through that door there.’
‘Maybe we don’t want to.’ A woman with short, straight hair turned her nose up at the door.