by E. E. Holmes
On the far side of a clump of rubbish bins, I rounded on him.
“How do you know me?”
“I don’t,” the spirit said.
“Then how do you know my name?”
“They told me.”
“Who told you?”
“The people who want me to deliver the message.”
“And who the ruddy hell are these people?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t really know them either.”
I threw my hands into the air in frustration. “Then what the blazes do you know, mate?”
“I know you’re the same. You and… and them. You’re the same.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “And what is that supposed to mean? How are we the same?”
The spirit shrugged. “Well, you can all see me, for a start.”
That pulled me up short, I can tell you. Suddenly, my heart was pumping like I’d just run a mile. It took me a full minute to calm down enough to ask my next question, but the ghost didn’t rush me. Honestly, he looked grateful for the break.
“Someone else who sees ghosts wants you to give me a message?”
“That’s right,” the boy replied.
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“What do you mean, ‘well what?!’ What the hell is the bloody message, already? Let’s have it!”
“Oh, right,” the boy said, twisting his cap so hard, he looked in danger of ripping the thing right in two. “The message is, ‘The spirit world needs you. We can teach you how to use your gift. It is your destiny.’”
I blinked.
“That’s… that’s it,” the boy said, a bit sheepishly.
I snorted. “My destiny? It’s my destiny to get stalked by the likes of you every place I try to go, is it? Not bloody likely. Tell your friends thanks, but no thanks. I’m managing this gift just fine on my own.”
“They said you might say that.”
“Say what?”
“That you weren’t interested in talking to them. And if that happened, I was to tell you that they don’t give up so easily.”
“Is that so?”
“Um… yes. At least, that was the message. Please don’t get mad at me, I’m just the poor sod they asked to deliver it.”
I snorted. “Right, then. And is that it? Is that the whole message?”
The boy cringed. “There’s a bit more, but I’m not sure I want to tell you anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Well, it sounds just a bit… melodramatic, to be honest.”
I rolled my eyes. “Come on, mate, you may as well come out with it. You’ve got me standing here, haven’t you?”
The boy gave a great gulp and muttered. “They’ll be watching you.”
I just about busted a gut laughing. “Right. Well, that’s just brilliant. Listen, run along then, will you, and tell them you’ve been a good lad and delivered their message, whoever the bloody hell they are. You can also tell them to blow it out their arse. Cheers, mate.”
And with that, I turned and ran, an activity I never participate in on purpose, unless I’m being chased by an ax murderer, and got to my shift three minutes late, fresh out of breath but plum full of excuses.
I did not, at that particular moment, get sacked.
To be honest, I didn’t think about the ghostly messenger much at all that day while I was at work. I had too much to learn, seeing as it was my first day and I had no bloody idea what I was doing. I mean, learning how to operate a fryer full of hot oil isn’t really something you should do while you’re distracted, and seeing as I didn’t want to wind up in hospital covered in third-degree burns, I was on my best behavior. I blundered my way through making sandwiches, refilling sauce dispensers, and taking orders. Despite my general ineptness, I still managed to get two blokes’ numbers for the purposes of future shenanigans, though this wasn’t strictly part of my training. By the end of the night, after seven hours on my feet, I was absolutely knackered. Not too knackered to tuck into a huge plate of chips swimming in brown sauce, of course, and that’s where the next ghost found me, sitting in the bus shelter and stuffing my gob.
I felt her before I saw her, and gave a huge sigh. “Not now, love, can’t you see I’m weak for want of nourishment? Look at me, I’m wasting away!”
The spirit ignored my request, like spirits usually do, in my experience, and floated her way into the shelter, coming to rest on the bench beside me. If she’d been a living person, we’d have been rubbing shoulders. Instead, I just started shivering from the drop in temperature.
“Have you given any consideration to the message you received earlier today?” the woman asked. In life, she’d been tall, thin, and attractive, real put-together like. She was going to be harder to shake off than that first kid, I could already tell.
“Not a bit,” I replied through a mouthful of chips.
“Really? I find that hard to believe,” the woman replied, raising her eyebrows.
I shrugged. “You ain’t never been put in charge of a deep fryer, then, I’m assuming.”
“I should think not,” the woman replied, looking scandalized at the very thought.
“Well, then, you’ll have to take my word for it,” I said. I held up my cardboard takeaway container and wafted it toward her. “Fancy a nosh?” I grinned at the joke, which was admittedly a bit below the belt.
Though I’m fairly sure she couldn’t smell anything in her current state, the woman turned her nose up at it in disgust. “Not even if I was alive and starving.”
I cackled and dug in again. “Suit yourself.”
“Now, about the message from this afternoon…”
“Let me ask you something,” I interrupted, plopping my food on the bench and turning to face the woman properly for the first time. “If this message is so bloody important, why don’t these mysterious people come and talk to me themselves?”
“They require a certain amount of anonymity. It’s as much for their protection as for your own.”
This was not what I expected her to say, and I had to chew on it for a minute before I could decide what to say next.
“Why would I need protection?” I asked, hoping like mad that my voice sounded like I wasn’t bothered.
“Anyone with your abilities would be wise to tread carefully,” the woman replied, and I could tell that she was trying to answer me without really answering me at all. It got my back up again.
“I’m always careful, and that includes not trusting ghosts who speak in riddles instead of just saying what they bloody well mean,” I replied. I took up my chips again, but suddenly found I wasn’t that hungry anymore. My insides were all churned up and my palms were sweaty.
“They don’t want to alarm you,” the woman said, and her voice was a bit gentler now, like she knew she was about to lose me. “Your abilities are not just a party trick, Savannah Todd. They are much, much more than that. It is crucial that you heed this warning and allow them to help you.”
“Yeah?” I nearly shouted, standing up and letting all my gorgeous chips slide to the ground. “Well, I’m not much of one for heeding. And I don’t need anyone’s help, all right? I’ve managed this on my own my whole life, and I’ll keep on managing it just fine.”
I turned my back on the ghost, who did not follow me. But she did call after me. “They’ll wait for you to come to your senses, but they won’t wait forever. Tell a messenger when you’re ready.”
I flipped two fingers over my shoulder at her and started walking toward the next bus shelter on the route, but I walked right past it. In fact, I walked the entire way back to the flat, nearly two miles, just to avoid any other ghosts who might start harassing me. If I kept moving, maybe they’d take the hint and leave me alone.
When I finally peeled my sorry arse out of bed the next day and ran out to the offy for my mum, I found out quick that I was in proper trouble. The ghosts were everywhere. Three of them stood right at the front door. They li
ned the pavement on both sides of the street. There was one on every bench, under every lamppost, on every corner, and every last one of them was staring at me and calling my name. I don’t mind admitting that I was half-mad with fear by the time I made it back to the flat, and knocked back a bevvy just to steady my nerves.
My little sister Maisie walked into the kitchen. “You ain’t supposed to be drinking that in the house,” she announced, as if I didn’t already know it.
“Bugger off, Mais. I’m not in the humor,” I grumbled.
“I’ll tell Mum,” Maisie taunted.
“Well, tell her then, and have done with it, you little twit!” I shouted.
Maisie seemed to decide, on balance, that maybe she should keep her little trap shut, which showed an unusual amount of sense for someone so closely related to me. “A lady stopped by to see you,” she said instead.
I felt my heart speed up again. “When?”
“Just now. You only just missed her. You probably passed her on the pavement.”
“I didn’t see no one on the pavement,” I said, which was a lie, of course. I’d seen plenty of people on the pavement—far too many of them for my liking—but as none of them were still living, they didn’t matter for the purposes of our conversation. “What did she look like?”
“Pretty. Very posh. Dark hair. I liked her, she smelled good and had lipstick and high heels on.”
I rolled my eyes. Maisie’s standards of liking people had mostly to do with how closely they resembled her Barbie dolls. “And what did she say?”
“She asked if you lived here, and I said yes. Then she asked if you were at home and I said no. Then she asked when you would be back and I said I thought soon, and she said she would come back later,” Maisie replied without hardly breathing.
“Did she say when?”
“Nope.”
“Well, did she tell you her name, at least?”
“Nope.”
“A great bloody help you are,” I muttered.
“Don’t swear or I’m telling mum you left us alone,” Maisie replied before spinning and running back to our bedroom and slamming the door behind her.
I considered aiming a beer can at the door, but that would have been a waste of perfectly good beer, so I managed to talk myself out of it.
I started arguing with myself about what I should do next. Whoever this woman was, I didn’t want to talk to her. Maisie said she was coming back, so if I wanted to avoid her, I should just disappear, like I usually did when I wanted to avoid something. Poof.
Trouble was, I couldn’t avoid the ghosts. They were everywhere, more of them all the time. I fancied I could almost feel the chill of them, creeping into the flat, dropping the temperature, turning the air clammy and cold. I went to the window and twitched the curtain open so that I could peer down onto the street. There they all were, a crowd of spirit stalkers milling around, waiting to descend on me the next time I walked out my door. There would be no disappearing now. No poof-ing for old Sav this time.
Maybe I was being a fool, avoiding this woman, whoever she was. Maybe the thing to do was wait right here until she turned up again, and confront her. If I kept avoiding her, she’d just keep coming back. No, better to have it out, face to face, and let her know that I wasn’t playing whatever game she was proposing. Yeah, that would sort it out. Then, I could get on with my life.
I went into the sitting room, sat down on the couch and flicked on the telly. I was hoping to distract myself, but I couldn’t even focus on the screen. I kept jumping at the sounds of my sisters’ voices, at every tiny noise from out in the corridor or in the street. When my mum opened the door coming home from her knitting club, I nearly had a heart attack.
“Bloody hell, woman, what the blazes do you think you’re doing, sneaking up on a person like that?!” I shouted at her.
She just stood in the doorway, her keys still in her hands and a massive bag of yarn swinging off her arm while she stared wide-eyed at me. “Who’s sneaking up, then? I just walked in me own front door, for the love of God!”
“Sorry, mum,” I sighed, settling back onto the couch.
“I should hope so,” my mum replied, before turning and gesturing out the doorway. “There’s someone here who’d quite like to speak with you, though she mightn’t anymore, now that she’s heard the way you talk to your own mother.”
“Who are you…” My voice trailed off, because I’d just spotted a woman standing behind my mother.
A tall woman. Pretty. Very posh. Lipstick. High heels. I couldn’t get a sniff of her from where I was sitting, but I was willing to bet that she smelled damn good.
Fuck me.
The woman caught my eye quickly and then turned to my mother with a bright, friendly smile on her face.
“There you are, Alice,” she said, in a voice smooth as silk. She reached out and handed my mother two more outsize shopping bags.
“Cheers, I really appreciate the hand, and all,” my mother said, bunging her own bag onto the counter so that she could take the other two out of the woman’s hands. “Hope it wasn’t a bother.”
“Nonsense, no bother at all,” the woman replied, and turned to me at last. “Hello, Savannah. It’s nice to see you again.”
I almost asked her what the hell she meant by “again,” but before I could even open my mouth, she had turned back to my mother. “I met Savannah at that quaint little restaurant she works at.”
I snorted. Calling that greasy chippie a restaurant was stretching the boundaries of reality if you ask me, but my mum didn’t seem to mind. She just beamed at the woman and said, “Oh, yeah, we’ve gotten our takeaway there for years. They’ve got the best chips.”
“Indeed,” the woman replied, as though she completely agreed. “Anyway, we got to chatting and I thought Savvy would be just ideal for an educational opportunity with my organization. I promised to stop by to tell her a bit more about it. Still up for a chat, Savannah?”
The woman smiled, looking for all the world as though we were best mates meeting up for long-standing plans.
“What organization is that, then?” my mother asked, looking skeptical. “I realize my Sav seems sharp enough, but school was never her cup of tea, if you get my meaning.”
“Oh, I’ve no doubt she’s absolutely brilliant when she applies herself, and of course, I can see where she gets it,” the woman said, dodging the first part of the question smooth as you like. “Having a mother like you, who can so deftly juggle four girls, while running a household, and all the challenges that come with it? Savannah says you’re quite the domestic goddess.”
Now, my mum was a right sap for a well-delivered compliment, and this woman certainly knew how to dish ‘em out. I would have been annoyed if I hadn’t been so impressed to see a master at work, not to mention the fact that she gave me all the credit for it.
“Is that so?” my mum said, positively preening. “She said that, did she?”
“Oh, yes,” the woman replied. “And on that note, we won’t keep you another moment. Savannah, shall we?” She gestured down the hallway.
The presumption. The sheer cheek of the woman.
“Well, go on, Sav, don’t be rude, now,” my mum added, raising her eyebrows at me.
What else could I do? I slid right off the couch, grabbed my mac off the hook and followed her out the door without another word.
We didn’t speak until we reached the bottom of the stairs.
“Clever of you, to get to me through my mum,” I said grudgingly.
“Thank you,” the woman replied. “I often find that the indirect routes are best. Usually, I employ spirits for that purpose, but that particular approach didn’t seem to work with you.”
“What one person calls indirect, another person might call dodgy.”
The woman smirked and gave a shrug. “If you like.”
“Am I allowed to ask your name, at least, or do you answer to ‘Oi! You!’” I asked.
She held out
a hand. “My name is Celeste Morgan. It’s a pleasure to know you.”
“Savannah Todd. I can’t truthfully say the same, as yet.” I took her hand to shake it, but pulled it away suddenly. Something odd, like a gentle current of electricity, had run through my fingers when I’d touched her.
“Ah, you felt that, did you? Good. Very good,” Celeste said, and proceeded out the door and down the front steps.
The streets were still swarming with ghosts, but none of them were whispering to me anymore. They weren’t moving either. On the contrary, they were dead silent, like statues of ice, and they were watching this Celeste woman instead. That was… interesting.
We turned and headed down the road just as the street lamps started to come on. Celeste waited until we had walked past a knot of young blokes messing about outside a pub before she spoke again.
“Have you considered what Hubert and Lavinia have spoken to you about?”
“Who are Hubert and Lavinia?” I asked.
She looked at me, puzzled. “The two spirits we sent to speak with you. Didn’t you ask their names?”
I shook my head. “Why would I ask their names?”
“Don’t you usually ask someone’s name when you have a conversation with them? You asked mine,” Celeste said. There was an edge of something in her voice that got my back up a bit.
“I don’t tend to get… friendly with the ghosts I see ‘round here,” I said.
“Don’t you wonder about them? About who they are? About why they might be here?”
I shrugged. “I might have, once, but these days I’m mostly just trying to steer clear of them.”
“Haven’t you ever wondered why you can see them when others cannot? Why they seem to seek you out? What they might want from you?” Celeste asked.
I shrugged again. “I dunno. Everyone’s got their issues, haven’t they? This is mine.”
“And is that how you think of it, this ability you have? As an issue?”
“Well, how the hell else am I meant to think about it? I’ve got ghosts following me around like stray puppy dogs, and it’s all I can do not to let on to the living people around me that I’ve got an unwanted entourage of the dead! What do you want me to call it, a party trick? A special talent?”