by Sarah Dalton
On and on in a relentless plod. My breathing is loud and laboured, but barely audible, even to me, over the wind. My bruised muscles ache. Every few steps I stop and call uselessly.
Seth. Igor. Neil. Lemarr.
Lacey.
Seth. Igor. Neil. Lemarr.
Lacey.
Both ghosts should be able to sense me. Neither of them come anywhere near me.
Where is Amy? What is she doing to Seth?
Lacey is refusing to answer my call. Is she so angry that she has left me for dead? Does she want me to suffer that much?
They are wearing me down again. I don’t know which of the five moors I am in right now, but it is chipping away at my resolve. Step by step, slip by slip, tread by tread. Not long ago, I felt the cold fear as something crawled across the back of my hand. I think about it now, and each time, it gets bigger. What if it was a snake? They are rare, but venomous snakes exist in England. Worse still, it could be some creature escaped from whatever exotic place it came from. You hear of deadly spiders transported in crates of bananas, or dangerous snakes flushed down the toilet.
I wipe the sweat from my forehead onto the back of my jacket. The ground is beginning to level out, now. I can’t be far from the summit. Surely, surely this is the end. This is it.
And what happens when you get there? What are you going to do next?
When I finally find level ground, my trembling fingers pull my phone from my shoulder bag. Still no signal.
“Seth?”
The wind is my one reply. I close my eyes in frustration.
When I open them, I’m not alone.
“Amy, you don’t have to do this. You can stop now, I’ll help you find peace. I’ll help all of your…” I search for a word to describe the strange shadows, “friends find peace and move on.”
She advances. Her tongue snakes out of her mouth.
At first, my muscles tense with the longing to run, to turn around and sprint into the darkness. But what good will that do me? What is the point in running when I don’t know what I’m running to?
The Athamé is in my hand.
“Amy, I’m going to free you. Don’t you understand?”
I step towards her and lift the blade. Her eyes flicker for a moment, and she backs away from me, unused to her victims standing up for themselves.
“Okay,” I say aloud. “The first symbol, what is it?” I think back to the night in the graveyard when Igor showed us how to create the circle of protection. “A sweep to the left, arc underneath, two strokes right…” The symbol begins to take shape, burning brightly through the air. Amy’s eyes follow the movements of the knife like a cat watching a spider crawl across the wall. When it’s done, she stands still, quiet and observant.
This isn’t the murderous ghost I’m used to.
I take a sidestep to the right and begin the second symbol. Three strokes left, up and down, to the right… It burns in the air, suspended by nothing. Amy is still.
It’s working and I don’t want to jinx it. I don’t want to spook her, so I step slowly to the right again, ready to draw the symbol behind her back, but this time, my mind draws a blank. Whenever I think back to Igor’s teaching, I can’t remember the third symbol. Why can’t I remember? Because Seth paused to kiss your nose and you lost concentration.
Stupid Mary, stupid, stupid. Think. Your life depends on it, think. I close my eyes.
Cold fingers grip my throat and I open my mouth to scream. As my eyes begin to flutter open, a horrible thought pops into my head. During that split second when my eyes had been closed, I’d imagined Seth with his hands around my neck, his face twisted into an animalistic grimace. It made me hesitate, for a fraction of a moment, frightened by what I might see, frightened that someone I care about could hurt me, and frightened to see Amy with her small wrists under my chin.
I open my eyes.
Amy.
Should I be relieved?
She presses her forehead against mine, and I feel her like she’s flesh and blood.
“Don’t…” I croak. “You don’t have to…”
The air crackles with energy before another shape appears. At first the shape is shadowed in dark, and I think that one of Amy’s strange shadows has come to finish me off, but then it steps forward and the moonlight catches yellow hair.
Lacey.
“Get off my friend, you silly cow!” Lacey grabs a handful of Amy’s hair and pulls her back. “I gave you a chance and you blew it. I wanted to help you.”
Amy lets out a noise like a yelp as Lacey drags her backwards. Her hands release my throat and I rub the life back into the bruised skin. I find myself staring at the two ghosts, gormless and in shock. It takes me a moment to realise I still have the Athamé in my hand.
“Lacey, hold her still, I’ll perform the ritual.”
But Amy twists from Lacey’s grip and yanks herself away. Stunned by the confrontation, she gawps at us both, and her blackened eyes humanise with amazement. Her mouth opens and closes as though she is trying to speak.
“I wanted to help you,” Lacey says.
Amy drops to the ground. Her bare toes are no longer floating inches from the grass, and it tugs on my heart to see her at her natural height. She’s tiny.
“I wanted you to trust me,” Lacey continues in a small voice.
It never occurred to me that Lacey might take this mission so personally. We’ve always talked about stopping Amy from killing, but we’ve never taken the time to see her as the frightened child she is. I realise then that Lacey has grown attached to the girl. They’re both ghosts, and neither of them want to be dead. They were both killed by a murderer. They have a bond I could never understand.
As Lacey talks, Amy’s strange hair begins to calm. It floats down to her shoulders, lying flat down her cheeks, dropping to her collar bones as hair should fall. She wrings her bloodied hands and the blood stains slowly fade away.
“I still want you to trust me. We’re not here to hurt you. We just want you to stop hurting other people.”
Amy’s mouth becomes a normal mouth, her eyes normal eyes, and her dress is whiter than before. Her skin loses the green-blue tinge; it is peachy, pink in the cheeks.
I’m in awe of my friend. She tames evil before my eyes. She has brought the humanity back to a ghost long caught in a hostile revenge loop. I never imagined that Lacey could be this powerful.
When Amy speaks for the first time, her voice is tiny. It is the fading wind that allows me to hear her. “I never meant to.”
“I know,” Lacey says. “I know you didn’t.”
“Are you going to send me away?” Amy says.
“Only if you want to go.”
Amy nods. She turns around and walks, like a regular human child, through the moors. I exchange a glance with my friend, and she indicates for us to follow Amy. We walk together in silence, following in the footsteps of the murdered child.
Chapter Twenty-Two
There’s a reason many people don’t read the newspapers anymore, or watch the news at 10pm every night. Those who do keep up with current affairs assume that these people are ignorant and stupid. But that’s not the reason at all.
The news is traumatic. It’s an information ticker of all the worst things human beings are capable of doing. It’s a run-down of the worst deaths from across the world. Some people can’t handle it, and they make the right decision to ignore it.
Sometimes I wish I could ignore it, too. Maybe I could, if I stopped paying attention to the Things and stopped hanging around with ghosts. Maybe then I wouldn’t find myself on the moors at midnight, with my ears battered by gales and most of my friends missing.
But I don’t feel like a watcher at all, I feel more like the reporter sent to warzones, like I have a duty to fulfil. There aren’t many people who can hear the dead. I assume there are others like me, out there somewhere, but I don’t know of anyone. So, right now, I’m all Amy has. I’m the only one who can listen to her story. T
he only living person.
She shows us.
We walk back to the spot where Seth told us he crouched behind the rocks and witnessed his father stab a little girl. Amy stands and looks down at the grass with her hands folded behind her back. She has an almost serene expression on her face, one of acceptance.
When I see him, my stomach lurches so hard I think I might throw up. It’s the eyes first. They are clear, even in the darkness. They are brazil-nut brown, but with a hard glint. Dark stubble lines the jawline that I know so well. He has his shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows. He stands over Amy and the knife blade glints in the moonlight.
“It’s not him,” Lacey whispers. “It’s okay, it’s not him.”
Seth’s father is a flickering flame in the night. He’s here as some part of Amy, as she shows us her last night alive. Now I will share those memories with Seth. I’ll have a part of him with me forever.
After it’s over, Amy walks away again. She is smiling now, like she didn’t just spend the last few minutes watching her own death. She waves us along with her.
I should be relieved that what I already knew has been confirmed. Seth is not a murderer, but then I saw his heart, so I knew. But I wasn’t sure… It was the moors. I swallow thickly. It was the moors, playing with my mind. Of course it was.
Amy winds her way through patches of heather, up and over hillocks, down into vales, walking and walking until I wonder if she might be leading me to my death. As the wind rushes through my hair, more strange moor-inspired thoughts pop into my mind—like Amy and Lacey, plotting together to murder me and keep me as a ghost. I shake my head. The moors cannot play with my friendship with Lacey. I trust her.
Finally, she stops. Without saying a word, she points to a patch of grass, nodding.
“You want me to dig?” I ask.
Amy nods again.
I turn to Lacey and she shrugs.
I get on my knees for the second time tonight, using my hands, and the Athamé, to dig into the soil. It’s damp and easy to shift. Clods of grass are teased away with little fuss as I plunge the knife into the soil. With each motion, my gut clenches, anticipating what I might find. It could be the remains of another victim. I know that. My fingers shake with every dig, yet I keep going because Amy wants me to, and Amy deserves to be heard.
When my fingers hit cloth, I panic. Tears fill my eyes.
I don’t want to see… I don’t want to…
But Amy nods me on. She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t have to. She simply nods.
I’m cold all over when I grasp that cloth. I screw my eyes shut as I pull it from the earth. It’s only when I realise how light the object is, that I open them again.
It isn’t remains. There’s no second body buried in the dirt, Amy has led me to the murder weapon. Wrapped in a bloodied, muddied shirt, is a kitchen knife.
It looks so small, so small and insignificant. It’s the kind of knife you would use to dice onions into fine mulch. It doesn’t seem sharp enough, somehow.
I recover it and place it in my bag.
“I’ll take it to the police,” I tell Amy’s ghost.
She steps forward with a small smile on her face. She was a beautiful little girl, with skin as soft as peaches. Her cheeks are filled with a delicate blush, and her raven coloured locks fall down to her chest, covering part of her white dress. My heart is sore for her. It’s as though I’ve been scraped with a cheese grater, leaving me raw and utterly shredded.
“I’m ready now,” she says, in a voice that was robbed of its opportunity to grow up.
I can’t believe that the girl in front of me is the same creature who tried to kill me—not once, but twice. She seems so calm. All it took was to listen to her story, to watch her memories, and find the evidence to deliver justice.
“Are you sure?” Lacey asks her.
Amy nods three times and smiles broadly. Lacey rushes towards her and pulls her into an embrace.
I wipe the dirt from the Athamé and when Amy has taken her position in front of me, I begin the first symbol. This time, it flows through me as though I was destined to carve this symbol in the air. When it comes to the third symbol, I see it so clearly in my mind that it seems as though I’m looking at a picture. After the fourth symbol, Amy places her hands gently on the circle of protection.
“I have to put the dagger in your heart,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she replies. “I don’t think it will hurt.”
When she goes, it is with that same smile on her face. I have tears wetting my cheeks, dripping down my chin. A strange calm descends, finally soothing the squall, bringing with it a little drizzle, to cleanse me of the mud and memories of murder.
I wish I could ignore the worst things humans do to each other. But if we all ignored them, the victims would never have anyone to hear them.
*
I’ve been twisted and hopeless on the moors. Time stretches and the cold seeps into your bones. I’ve never wanted to be away from a place so badly as I do at this moment in time. It’s different to being in a fire. That is quick and filled with adrenaline; this is a slow wearing down of your resolve. Without Lacey I would be curled in a ball, begging for it all to end.
There is no phone signal. I stumble around in the dark, calling for the others.
“I think we should go this way,” Lacey says.
“Can you sense them?” I ask.
“I’m not sure. Not in the same way I sense you. I’m just vaguely aware of life. It’s like some sort of pulsation in the air.”
I’m too tired to think of what that might mean. I want to see Seth, and yet I don’t. I doubted him, even for a moment, and somehow I think he’ll smell it on me.
“Mary? Mary?”
“Neil?”
Lacey breaks out in a grin as my heart begins to pound. We rush forwards. I trip over my feet in haste. Lacey moves in jerking motions.
“Neil, we’re coming…”
A dark, Neil-like shape is visible ahead, and it energises my legs a little more. When I see his face, and his nose piercing, and his spiky black hair, I wrap my arms around his neck and squeeze him hard.
“Easy, chick,” he says, a soft ripple of laughter escapes from his lips. “We’re here. We’re all here, but…” His body stiffens and I know something is wrong.
I pull back. “Is it Seth?”
Neil shakes his head and moves to the side. That’s when I see the shape on the ground. Above it, someone is punching its chest, and I dash forward to stop them. That’s when I realise that the shape on the ground is Igor, and the shadow punching his chest is Seth attempting to resuscitate him.
“Oh no…” I drop to my knees next to Igor’s long, lumpy body. My fingers grope for his hand. “What happened?”
It’s Lemarr who answers. He almost startles me as he appears from a shadow, but I’m too worn out to be frightened anymore. “He took a tumble down one of the hills and hit his head real bad. I managed to get a signal on the hill over there and phoned the police. They’re sending an air ambulance, but it might take some time to find us. I tried to call you, Mary, but your phone kept cutting out. We looked all over for you. Seth was beside himself.”
Seth blows air into Igor’s mouth and pumps his chest in a rhythm. All I can do is hold Igor’s hand and try to get some warmth into his body.
“How long has he been like this?”
Lemarr doesn’t answer. He drops his eyes instead.
“Have there been any more of those shadows?” I ask, meaning the strange creatures that tried to pull us into the ground. The thought of them sends a shiver up and down my spine.
“No. What happened to Amy? I can’t believe… I can’t believe I saw her.” Lemarr fiddles with one of his dreadlocks, staring down at the grass with wide eyes. “She was so real.”
“Very real,” I reply. I’m half aware of Lacey, sitting next to me on the grass, and the electricity of her ghost form. “But she’s gone, now. She showed
us what happened to her, and I found something… Something that I need to give to Seth.”
“Guys, I think Igor has gone,” Neil says. “He’s dead.”
“No,” I say. “Not yet.”
It’s Lacey who whispers into Igor’s ear, “It’s time to go, old man.”
And he does.
It’s not like in the films where a soul haloed in white light floats out of a body, it’s more like a crackle and a pop and then there’s a person who looks exactly the same as the person on the grass, but now he’s next to you. I stand up and face him.
“Looks like I’m off, lass,” he says. “You’d better keep hold of that Athamé, eh?”
“I’m sorry—”
“No, don’t be. Maybe I’ll finally find her.”
“I hope you do.”
Igor flickers once, twice, and then he’s gone.
But Seth still doesn’t stop. He pumps at Igor’s chest, keeping that rhythm, that relentless rhythm. I approach him slowly.
“Seth… stop now,” I say. I ease my hands onto his shoulders. “Stop now. It’s over.” I crouch down so that I’m at his level, and run my hands down to his, pulling him away from Igor’s body.
“No, it’s not over. He can still come back,” he says.
“He’s gone.” I pull Seth up, letting him lean his full weight on me.
A gradual roar sounds from above, and a light beams down on us. As the air ambulance flies overhead, Seth whispers into my ear, “It’s all my fault.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
My parents are mad. Oh goodness me, they are very mad indeed. Mum can’t even look at me. Dad tuts under his breath and repeats the same question over and over again: what were you thinking?
We all agreed on one explanation. We employed Igor to take us on a special ghost hunt on the moors because we wanted to find Little Amy. But when we were out there, we were spooked by the creepiness of the moors, scattered, dropped our torches and freaked out. It was then that Igor fell down the hill and landed on the rocks.
The young detective gave us all a lecture on moor safety. He glared at each of us, and as he talked, spittle flew from his mouth.