Verity ached to hug his forlorn little shape, and clung to the hope that someone, somewhere, could do for her son’s ghost what she was doing for this little boy. Jay might be dead, but he needed love. He needed to be minded.
“I don’t really remember my mother,” James said. “Everything is foggy when I think back to then. To... before. But... but I’m sure she would have tried to keep me warm.”
“Of course she would have, dear James,” Verity assured him. She had wondered, of course, about the little boy and how he had come to be dead. How he had come to be here, stuck here. Who his family were. His clothes were plain and not easily identifiable as being from a particular era; his speech was not particularly old-fashioned, but didn’t come across as modern, either. It doesn’t matter, Verity told herself. It doesn’t matter how he died. What matters is that he needs love and kindness. He is so lonely, and I can help him.
“Was it long, that you were away this time?” James asked. “It felt so much longer than before.”
“Two weeks,” Verity replied. “I wish I could stay here with you all the time, James. I really do.” Her eyes glistened again.
“I wish that, too,” James said softly. “For you to be here with me, always.”
“I’ll come as often as I can, I promise,” Verity told him in a hoarse whisper. “I promise,” she repeated. They were silent for a few moments as James regarded her as if to challenge her sincerity, then the boy nodded.
“Will you please sing for me?” he asked, and Verity nodded. She wiped her eyes and cleared her throat, and began to sing Twinkle Twinkle, the song that had always sent her Jay into a sound sleep.
~
When Verity awoke, it was only just beginning to get light outside, and as she cast her eyes to the couch where James was lying, she hesitated over the huge dark shape there: surely too large to be her little boy ghost. As she stared at it, then blinked hard, the shadow seemed to shrink and in a moment she could see the shape of James again. Just my eyes playing tricks on me, she thought.
“Good morning, Ma—” James said sleepily. “I mean, good morning, Miss. I mean, good morning, Verity.” He stumbled over the words.
“Good morning, dear little James,” Verity replied, an ache already forming in her throat because she couldn’t kiss his forehead and brush the fringe out of his eyes. He nearly called me Mama, she thought, but pushed the notion away.
“Are you going to go down for breakfast?” James asked.
Verity shook her head. “I’ll get them to send it up,” she told him. “I only have the weekend here; I want to spend every moment of it with you.”
“Thank you.” He smiled. “It feels so good not be be lonely anymore. At least, when you’re here.”
“You are such a darling little boy,” Verity told him as she picked up the phone to order breakfast. Nothing on the menu sounded particularly good, but she knew she had to eat; her mother, her sisters kept telling her she had to eat, she had to keep her strength up. It’s what Jay and Gerald would have wanted, they told her. You have to go on living, they said. You didn’t die in that car accident: stop acting like you did. Although Verity felt churlish for thinking badly of them; after all, it was their gift of a weekend stay here in Lake Manor Hotel that had first allowed her to meet James. She also felt guilty for lying to them about where she was going this weekend. It was easier to say she was going to catch up with an old school friend who had moved north than to admit she was going back for her fourth weekend in two months. Verity ordered scrambled eggs and gave a generous tip to Hank when he brought it to her door.
As she ate it slowly, she wondered what James had liked to eat, when he was alive. There were so many questions that she didn’t dare to ask, for fear of upsetting him, and because she wasn’t sure what the etiquette was, really. How can a living person ask a dead one what it’s like, she wondered, feeling that her craving to know was less important than his right to privacy on the matter. Especially as he was only a child, cheated of a full life. Verity glanced up and saw James watching her intently. Immediately she felt a pang of guilt, wondering if he could somehow sense her thoughts. His stare was so intense that she found herself looking away.
“You have to leave again tomorrow, don’t you?” James asked.
Verity nodded slowly. “I wish I could stay here all the time,” she told him.
“Why can’t you?” he asked. “You’re the only person who cares about me....” His voice grew softer. “You’re the only person in the whole wide world who even knows that I exist. Why can’t you just stay with me? Please?”
Verity choked back her mouthful of scrambled egg as a sob escaped. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I have to go back to my job; I can’t afford to stay here full time....” She shook her head. It surely wasn’t fair to burden a ghost child with financial worries. “I’m really sorry that I can’t,” she said. “If there was a way that I could, I would. But I will come as often as I can.”
James nodded, and his face seemed to Verity to be paler than ever. “It’s hard being like this,” he said. “The time moves so slowly when you aren’t here to look after me. I wish I was the same as you — then you could be my mother.”
Verity snuffled away more tears. “Dear, dear boy,” she said. “I love you very much, do you know that?”
James nodded, but it seemed to Verity to be half-hearted. If Jay had ever doubted her love, she could have showered him with hugs and kisses. Let him skip school for a day to do fun things with just her. Stroked his forehead gently while he fell asleep to the sound of her singing. She felt powerless to do anything for James, however, who wandered to the corner and muttered softly to himself. Words didn’t seem adequate; she wished she could touch him.
As Verity forced the final mouthful of her scrambled eggs down, the sudden ringing of her phone made her jump. James looked up, but didn’t otherwise react. “I’ll ignore it,” she told him, glancing at the screen. She didn’t particularly want to talk to her older sister Prudence anyway, but hoped that the gesture of failing to answer the phone would illustrate to James the commitment she had toward him. His face remained sullen, however, as a beep told her that she had a message waiting. Verity put the phone back in her bag without checking it.
“What would you like to do, James?” Verity asked him, after she felt the silence become awkward.
“Would you — could you — read me a story? Please?” James asked, his eyes wide as he looked up at her again.
“Of course.” Verity smiled. “Shall we read The Gruffalo again, or would you like a new one?”
“A new one, please,” James replied, and sat on the floor at Verity’s feet. She got off her chair and sat cross-legged on the floor beside him, removing some children’s books that had belonged to Jay from her bag.
“I think you might like this one,” she said, opening the book and hastily turning past the page where she had written an inscription, To Jason with love from Mummy, happy birthday my darling boy, less than a year before. “It’s got a character with your name in it. There aren’t as many pictures, and it’s quite long, but it is a truly marvelous story.” She saw him look up at her in anticipation. “It’s called James and the Giant Peach,” she continued. “Shall we begin?”
“Oh, yes.” James nodded. “Yes, please.”
~
“I’m sorry I got so cross with you,” James said to her later. “I just wish you could be here with me all the time. I wish... I wish that you were my mother. It just doesn’t seem fair, that I have no one. At least your Jay — he has his dad with him, I guess. Wherever he is. If they died in the same place, they must be together.”
Verity allowed the tears to roll silently down her cheeks as she nodded. It was already Saturday night; Sunday would roll around too soon, as it always did on a weekend away. Even with a late check-out arranged, she knew there was less than a full day left with James and then it would be at least a fortnight before she could see him again. She felt an actual ache in her
chest at the thought of him alone here in this room, with other guests staying there and not even seeing him. What inappropriate things had he been witness to, she wondered. Hotel rooms could be sordid places, even in a nice hotel such as this. He was just a child. He needed his innocence protected, somehow. She had managed to keep Jay innocent. Not that it mattered now, really, except to say that his life, though much too short, had been genuinely sweet. As she thought of her own empty home, Verity’s heart ached even more.
“If you were to die, do you think you’d be with your boy again?” James asked, not looking at Verity. “Do you think he’s in heaven, or is he... is he stuck somewhere, like me? With his dad to look after him? Do you think there even is a heaven?”
Verity’s voice was shaky. “I don’t know. I hope to see Jason again. I hope to. I honestly don’t know how I’m supposed to live my whole life without him, if I don’t have hope of seeing him again at the end of it. If I didn’t think I could get to see him again, I don’t know if it would be worth keeping going. What... what would be the point?” Her voice croaked as she finished her sentence, the thought that had hung around her since the accident now finally voiced aloud.
“I don’t think there is a heaven,” James said softly. “I don’t know. But I don’t think I could have been a bad person, before. So if there was a heaven, I should be there. Maybe the world is just full of people like me. Stuck where we died. I... I hope they aren’t all quite so lonely as I am when you aren’t here.”
Verity bawled; she couldn’t even manage a reply. The raw grief tore at her insides and she felt herself shaking. She would do anything, anything to be with Jay again. What was the point in living, without him in her life? And now there was James as well, but was he really in her life? Was she really in his, when she had to abandon him so often? She knew that if she had to choose which one to be with again, she would choose Jay in a heartbeat. Her affection for James was no match for the intense love she felt for her own son. But there was no guarantee she would ever see his sweet face again. What if there was no heaven, and he was just stuck like James, forever? On that stretch of road where he died? Verity felt vomit rising from the pit of her stomach as she acknowledged her fears, and made a dash for the bathroom. “I’m sorry,” she rasped at James, her throat raw. He didn’t reply. Verity vomited again and again.
Acid bile even seemed to come out of her eyes alongside the tears as she retched over the toilet. Eventually she had nothing more to expel, just continued to gulp in air as the tears streamed down her face. Verity imagined herself walking calmly onto the road where Gerald and Jason’s car had been hit. She could step right out onto the road and a car or truck could hit her, too. That would be the end of it, and she would be with them once more. She played the scene in her mind, but then wondered if a stray pedestrian such as herself would cause a bigger accident. What if the car didn’t hit her, but swerved and killed someone else? Would she be bringing the same tragedy she had recently suffered onto another family? That would make everything worse, and Verity just wanted to make everything better. To make the pain go away. Not to transfer it to some other mother or father and have them suffer instead.
At least here I can help, she thought. At least here, if I die here, I can look after James. If I go on, I will lose him, too, in time, and I will never see my son again. Never. Still occasionally dry-heaving, Verity began to fill the bath. She couldn’t even speak to James anymore, couldn’t look at him. She just focused on the water filling up the bath. Hot water, cleansing and calming. The front of her dress was covered in dribbles of vomit, but she didn’t take it off as she stepped into the water and lay down in it. The tears had left her dehydrated, and her head was pounding. It’ll be ok soon, she thought. It’ll all be over, it’ll all be ok. One way, or the other. Verity reached for her toiletries bag on the edge of the bathtub. She discarded the lotions and perfumes and pulled out her razor, hoping it wasn’t blunt: she hadn’t shaved her legs or underarms in months; there just didn’t seem much point.
James was silent, out in the main room. Verity was just existing in the moment. The water wrapped her up and kept her warm. She slipped a thin sliver of a blade out of the razor, and thought of Jay. He was the only thought she wanted in her mind at this moment. Verity closed her eyes and pictured her son, his life from baby to boy flashing before her eyes as she drew the razor firmly down her wrist and let her arm slide under the water. His giggles and gurgles, his first day at school, his favorite song; his funeral. Final tears fell slowly and gently down her face as her blood filled the bath, but Verity’s eyes were closed; all she saw were her memories.
~
The first thing she realized when she awoke was that the pain was still there. Not in her wrist, but deep inside her. The emotional ache had not subsided, and at first Verity felt it must not have worked. This was what she had escaped, surely, the pain? She opened her eyes, expecting to see a hospital bed, but she was still in the bathroom in the Lake Manor Hotel. Her body was in the bath, but she didn’t seem to be connected to it. Stuck here, she thought. No heaven. No Jay. But at least there’s James.
“James,” she called. “James. I can stay here with you now; you won’t be alone.”
“Excellent,” a voice replied. “That was even easier and sooner than I had expected.”
Verity was taken aback. It didn’t sound like James. She stepped out of the bathroom on noiseless feet. There was no James, just a huge, dark figure. “What have you done with him?” Verity shrieked. “I won’t let you hurt him!”
The figure turned to face her and she saw a sneering evil. “There is no him,” it replied calmly. “There is only me, and so many like you. You have fed me well, and while there is still hurt in your heart, you will continue to feed me.”
Verity looked around the room and saw various wraith-like figures, each bearing the mark of the suicide they had been encouraged into by this demon. Not one of them was a little boy. “No!” she screamed.
Room 7: Jumbled-up Jack
By Christopher Bean
Mark Fontanelle clunked and smashed his way through the forest. He must be mad; he’d still be in the damn bed if the stink of the scar that ran down his belly hadn’t sickened him to the point where he had to get up and shower in the hotel’s basic en suite. And why had the scar started smelling lately?
You could always jump in the lake and wash there, his mother’s voice said in his mind.
“If you want me to drown, I suppose I could,” he replied with a laugh.
I wish you’d learn to swim. What kind of fisherman can’t swim? I worry every year you come here!
“Yes, mother,” he mumbled, and carried on. With each step his tackle box ground into his hip, and the strap tore at his shoulder. Although bare branches slapped at him and, muggy as he was, he hadn’t the reflexes to avoid them, he was happy to honor her memory, and carried on. He could smell the rot of the lake, the mulch of the banks, and the icy water, with each inhalation — a glorious mix of shit and death, life and abandonment — and in a moment the lake melted out of the soupy morning haze.
He walked a short way around the perimeter, past the oily ford that fed the lake, ignoring the brambles that caught and tugged him, until he came to the spot he fished every year on this anniversary. From here, at the thin end of the lake, he had an unobstructed view of the water — and the ford: handy in case of flash floods, common this time of year.
You’ll be fine, I promise you.
By nine his bait had thawed enough that he could stop using the artificial lure and switch to a more relaxing fishing method. He settled back on his tackle box, took a swig of scalding coffee straight from an aluminum flask. The smell of the sweet, creamy drink hung in the golden gloom even after the gulp stopped burning his stomach. He rigged up his line with treble hooks and a fluorescent red float, then removed the heavy bait sack from the seatbox. Melted blood and viscera swilled in the corners of the bag, and a smell like burnt cloves hit him when he opened it
. He felt around inside and withdrew a large piece of meat; the thumb and finger were still connected by the webbing, so he pierced it with both hooks, wondering if the coarse, black hairs would make it less attractive to the pike. After slinging the line out, and waiting for the lake to return to its glassy stillness, he considered if the forest had looked this overgrown when he was born here. Had she walked these banks, bursting with him? The comfort of the imagined memory, coupled with her death, curdled into a bittersweet mix and he gazed off across the lake, lost in false nostalgia: trying to ignore the other voice, the real, rational one that liked to remind him he’d never known her.
If you hadn’t killed her coming out, you could ask her, couldn’t you?
Hours later he came out of a lost reverie, realising there’d been no sign of interest in his bait. Although the sun was much higher, the mist still clung to the lake and a light fog had rolled in over the banks. He wound in his tackle and caught the heavy bung float. The two trebles joggled at the end of the trace, empty. Bare hooks. No wonder he’d had no bites.
As he decided whether to return to the hotel, he heard a clinking and chiming coming from his left, somewhere around the ford. It was the only sound — even the few birds that’d haunted him had either vanished or fallen silent. He stood and tilted his head in the sound’s direction; he couldn’t see the ford, but the tinkling was coming from that direction clear and bright. May as well have a look; he had only scraps left — nothing substantial enough to catch a specimen fish — so he set the rod back in the rests and walked toward the sound.
Through the scribbles of bare trees and brambles he saw small white things like scraps of paper in the air, fluttering and turning. What is that? He was reminded of the hopeless papier mâché space ships he’d tried to make as a kid: they had lasted a week until they fell from the ceiling, deconstructing themselves piece by piece, until his uncle had made him sweep up the sad pile of newspaper dandruff on the floor of his bedroom.
The Haunting of Lake Manor Hotel Page 8