"No, it's Avril's, she's very proud of it. She's really into martial arts. Not just Taekwondo but Kung Fu and Karate as well. She runs training sessions in her spare time."
"I would have thought she's a bit, well, chubby to be any good at martial arts."
Sonia hit him in the shoulder. "Don't let her hear you call her that. But no, she's really very athletic despite her family's predisposition to plumpness. …It's proved very useful on one or two occasions. She gave a couple of muggers a really hard time a few months ago when they thought they'd pick on a couple of Goth chicks, I can tell you that."
"Well, I'll have to try not to get on her bad side, won't I?" Moon unconsciously weighed the statue in his hand before returning it to the mantelpiece.
"We'll have to arrange for you come over and watch more of Avril's collection sometime," said Sonia, as she saw him to the door shortly after ten o'clock. "They're not all as good as Mr Vampire but most of them are good fun."
"I'll take you up on that invitation." Moon gave her a lingering kiss. "I'm sorry but I won't be around much for the next few days. I tend to get up at two-ish and head off for work at about eight. Why don’t you phone me tomorrow at six, and you can tell me all about your day."
"Yeah, okay. Avril and I will be heading up to the Rest tomorrow night so I'll see what I can find out about the guys who've gone missing. Okay?"
"Great, I love you, you know." It was the first time he'd said it and he watched her face for her reaction.
She looked down for a second and he could almost see the ghosts of past disappointments drift behind her eyes, then she gazed back up at him. "Yeah, I guess I love you to, Jerry." They kissed again, long and hard. As they were parting Sonia reminded him, "Not through the cemetery tonight, Jerry, I want you in one piece when we get together on Friday. You know that ruddy week will be over by then." She winked at him suggestively as she closed the door.
Moon walked home elatedly but he made sure not to take the cemetery route. Instead, he took the road round by the Monica Wills Chapel. This rote avoided the cemetery itself, but did take him past its gateway, and he glanced in towards the darkened path as he went past. He could feel the cold aura of the Shadow Beast emanating from the place. Even from this distance he noticed that something strange was happening on the path. He hoped no one was in trouble down there, because there was no way he was willing to risk pitting himself against that creature again, not without Uri for back-up. He shook his head guiltily and turned to follow the slightly longer route that led towards Whiteladies Road and home.
In the darkened graveyard a fierce battle raged. Tentacles of darkness thrashed soundlessly among the tombstones as two opponents, predator and prey, locked in deadly combat. Finally, a single long, ghostly scream shredded the night as the loser succumbed and was sucked into a cold, malignant vortex of spiritual oblivion. The lights over the pathway returned to their normal brightness and a sinister figure, cloaked in shadows, disappeared into the night. It left in its wake a tiny red glowing ball that hovered angrily among the headstones like an enraged bee. This furious little spark of existence was all that remained of the Shadow Beast of St Andrew's Cemetery. The creature had clashed with the mysterious 'Ghost Eater' and had lost.
Chapter 12
The next day passed quickly for Moon. Having stayed up until about four thirty a.m., reading and playing computer games he had gone to bed as the sun rose. It hit him as slightly ironic that being forced to live out of step with the normal flow of life was something he and Uri had in common. He woke before his alarm rang at one- thirty in the afternoon and spent the next few hours pottering around, watching some television and adding a few extra touches to his article.
Moon found his off-duty time during the working part of his week a bit dissatisfying. This was because, if he intended to return to anything like a normal sleep pattern at the weekends, his leisure time had to be squeezed into the narrow gap between waking and going to work, which meant it was always at the back of his mind that he had to start work in a few hours. It was the one unfortunate aspect of an otherwise ideal arrangement that got his breadwinning out of the way quickly in the middle of the week and allowed him to enjoy long weekends.
He ate his main meal – a microwaved sell-by-date bargain - at about five-thirty in front of the TV. As he was washing his plate, the phone rang. It was Sonia calling as they'd arranged. They spent the next forty minutes chatting generally about their days and each other's lives, punctuated occasionally with gentle words and wishes that they didn't have to be apart for the next three nights. Then Sonia said, "Oh, by the way, I've a bit of info about our missing people. Two of them, Tonya and Jeff, aren't missing at all. They're both artists and they've been involved in some kind of communal art project down in Devon for the last few months. They didn't tell many people they were going, but Roger knew about it. I’d asked Avril to see what she could find out about the other guys who'd disappeared and he told her about those two last night while they were romancing over the phone."
"So that leaves us with, how many, three blokes and one girl?"
"Yeah, that's right, Dominic, Animal..."
"'Animal’?" Moon laughed.
"Yes, 'Animal', he used to play drums for Jumping Corpse, one of the death metal bands. They called him Animal because he played like the crazy drummer from the Muppets. The other guy's called Andy and I think the girl's name is Lorraine. Now that I come to think of it, I think Animal and Andy were something of an item for a while before Andy dropped out of the scene."
"You mean they're gay?"
"Yes, or bi. Whichever they are, I'm fairly sure they were together for a while up until late last year. Andy stopped coming to the Rest regularly shortly after Christmas, or so Avril tells me."
"What about the girl?"
"Lorraine? She never came back after the Christmas break. She was a bit of a drifter so no one really took much notice when she disappeared. I remember her telling me that she was squatting in a disused office building down between the M32 access and Old Market with some other kids. The place was really disgusting so I guess everyone thought she'd got fed up with Bristol and either gone back to her parents or moved on to somewhere else."
"So either Animal or Andy is the prime suspect for our killer."
"I guess so."
"We need to pass this information on to the police. Look, I'm going to have to get off to work soon. I hate to ask you but could you phone them."
"Sure, no trouble, maybe it’ll sound less suspicious coming from me anyway because I'm a Goth myself. I'll phone them once we've got off the phone." There was a mischievous pause. "So, when do I get to see you in your nurse's uniform? I bet you look really sexy," Sonia giggled.
"Ah! Now I know why you're still going out with me. I've heard about women like you."
"Aw, c'mon, you love it really."
"More to the point, I love you, Sonia."
There was a short moment of silence on the other end of the line. "And I love you, Jerry,” she replied hesitantly. “Sometimes too much, I think."
"You don't trust me, is that it?" Moon was concerned about the reluctance he'd sensed from Sonia when he'd tried to steer their relationship towards a deeper commitment. He knew how he felt about her but he was worryingly unsure if she felt the same way.
"You're a great guy, Jerry. It's just that Craig, my last boyfriend, turned out to be a real bastard. I've still got the scars to prove it."
"Scars? What happened?"
"He was really possessive and would beat me up if he thought I'd stepped out of line. It got so that he wouldn't allow me to go out on my own. Then one night we got into a row about me talking to one of his friends. He thought I'd been flirting. When I denied it, he took a kitchen knife and stabbed me in the side. The neighbours took me to casualty and I ended up in hospital for a week. After that I decided I didn't want to see him ever again."
"I don't blame you."
"Yeah, well, getting away from him was li
ke something like from a James Bond movie. I had to make sure he didn’t know when I was being discharged from hospital, sneaked into our flat while he was at work, packed most of my stuff and took a taxi to my mum's. I'd only been there a few days when he came around and tried to kick the door down. It was then I realised that I'd never be free of him in Reading, so I put in for a transfer from work. Thankfully, they were able to move me to Bristol within the month. I found out later that he'd had one night stands with a load of other women during the time we'd been together. Talk about double standards; I'm lucky the arsehole didn't give me AIDS."
"God, I'm surprised you didn't go off men altogether after that kind of experience."
"I have to confess there have been times that I've wished that I was gay. It would have made things so much easier, but I'm just not wired that way, I suppose. Anyway that was four years ago and you're the first bloke I've had more than a one- nighter with since I left Reading. That's why I'm a bit wary of putting all my emotional eggs in one basket. You'll just have to give me some time to adjust, Jerry, okay?"
"Yes, sure. I didn't know that you had that kind of emotional of baggage to cope with. Just let me know if I'm getting too intense, yeah?"
He sensed her smile over the phone. "Yeah, okay."
They spent five minutes playing the normal lovers' game of trying not to be the one to put the phone down last. Finally, Moon checked his watch. He needed to get a move on if he didn't want to be late. One of the Sisters on the ward where he was working that night wasn't too fond of him and kept an eye out for any reason to complain about his work. It would be just his luck for her to be on duty. The last thing he needed was another complaint to the hospital's night managers about not arriving on time.
As it turned out Moon's fears were unfounded and his night was generally uneventful. The night managers had scheduled him for the cardiology ward, where most of the patients, although not well, were reasonably stable. He did have to bleep the on call house officer once when a patient's vital signs went outside of safe limits and he had to monitor that patient hourly for the rest of the night but, apart from this, his biggest concern was staying awake, which was never easy on his first night of the week.
In the morning Moon gave his patient handover to the day staff then staggered wearily back to his flat. The first night tended to affect him like this but by Friday morning he'd have trouble getting to sleep. He smiled at Anna, who grinned at him mischievously, as he trudged up to the first floor landing.
"Hi, Anna, I hope you haven't been upsetting Mrs Foley again. Remember how I told you that she's a nice lady and it's not kind to tease her like you do."
"Oh bother!" Anna's grin turned to a scowl. "But she's so rude, Jerry, she won't play with me or talk with me or anything!"
"That's because she can't see you, sweetheart." Moon wondered how to explain this to Anna. Past experience of trying to explain to ghosts that they were actually dead had, at best, resulted in fierce denial. The last thing he wanted was the four- year-old ghost throwing a poltergeist tantrum when he needed to sleep. He had a flash of inspiration. "You see she's very deaf and almost blind. You know how older people get, and it's not right for you to make fun of her just because she's so old, is it?" Julie Foley was a well preserved forty-eight year old with a passion for younger men but Moon was banking on the hope that to Anna probably thought anyone older than about twelve was over the hill.
"Oh, right," replied Anna thoughtfully. Moon missed the strange little smile that played faintly on her lips. "Is that why she has to feel those gentlemen callers she has all over, because she can't see them very well?"
Moon felt himself going a bit red at the ears. "Yes, that's right Anna, and you're so very small she can't see you at all." He wasn't going anywhere near trying to explain the birds and the bees to a Victorian four-year-old.
"Well, that's funny," snapped Anna, fixing him with a very adult look, her chubby hands rising to her hips. "Because I thought they were making love, actually. They were certainly making enough noise about it."
Moon was deeply shocked. He had assumed that Anna was as blind to the present as most of the ghosts he had encountered but this was apparently not the case. This put a whole new complexion on Anna's situation and he sought desperately for the right response. "I'm sorry, Anna, I forgot that you've been around for a long time even though you're still a little girl."
"And I've seen some things in these flats that a little girl really ought not to see, Jerry - even things that a big girl ought not to see, sometimes. You're my friend, Jerry Moon, and it's easy for me to be the fragile Victorian child for you, because that is what I am. It's what the Fates - or whoever it is decides these things – have chosen that I should be, for now at least. But please understand that is not all that I am. I'll be one hundred and two next birthday and most of that time I've had nothing to do but watch the people who live here. Ever since my idiot father…!" She raised her voice so that it would reach the upper landing and thus eliciting a pathetic whimper from the object of her wrath. "Ever since my father threw me down these stairs, in fact… So, I know all about people - about their sordid little acts of selfishness and their unsung acts of greatness, and the long, boring, normal bits which fit in between." The smile she gave him seemed entirely out of place on her chubby, child's face. It was complex, ancient and wise: full of knowledge of all the massive contradictions that made up the human race. To Moon's surprise, it also contained a great deal of love. "You don't need to protect me from anything, Jerry. The things I probably needed protecting from got to me decades before you were born."
"Sorry," repeated Moon with chagrin.
"That's all right. How were you to know that some people are stuck on earth as ghosts for the benefit of others? The day that drunken fool upstairs eventually catches on and faces his guilt, I’ll finally be able to move on as well."
"That still doesn't justify upsetting Mrs Foley," said Moon sternly.
"Oh well, perhaps you're right, maybe I should give the poor woman a rest. It's just that I get so bored haunting this floor with no-one to talk to." The little ghost looked up tearfully at Moon then gave a heavy sigh. "You can't believe how hard it's been not being able to talk to someone about this for nearly a century, Jerry. I'm so glad you came to live here."
"It's good for me too, Anna. I haven't found anyone to help me since I began to discover my 'gift'. Perhaps it would be a good idea for us to talk about it sometime, but not now because I need to go to bed."
At that moment Mrs Foley opened her door and looked at Moon with bleary eyes. "Oh, hello Moon, it's you. Who were you talking to, I thought I heard voices?"
"Nobody, Julie," replied Moon, trying not to laugh at Anna, who was pulling faces behind Mrs Foley's back. "I was just talking to myself. You know; going through last night's shift in my head."
"Well, next time could you not do it on my landing, some of us don't have to get up until half past eight."
"Sorry, Julie, I sometimes forget how early it is when I
come home after a shift."
"Well, you could do with keeping it down a bit generally. I know you're a night worker but the rest of us aren't. What on earth were you doing a couple of nights ago? There was an awful bang from your room at about three o'clock. I nearly jumped out of my skin."
"A pile of books fell off one of my shelves," Moon lied, remembering Uri's cack-handed abuse of his window. "I'll be more careful in future."
Mrs Foley paused appreciatively to take in the sight of Moon with his nurse's uniform showing under his jacket. It clearly pleased her because she smoothed her hair and managed to inject a whisper of seductiveness into her next statement. "You'd just better be," she said with a suggestive smile as he headed up the stairs. Moon mentally shook his head, the woman was hopelessly incorrigible.
"I'll see you later, Jerry," vibed Anna.
"I will," Moon replied to both of them as he stumbled wearily off to his bed.
Chapter 13
"Impeccably," she replied. "Anyway, I thought you weren't allowed to let the patients get hot. Isn't it bad for them or something?"
"Yeah, but it keeps the NHS heating bills low."
Sonia laughed. "I always wondered why they keep hospitals so warm. Anyway, last night was your typical quiet Tuesday night at the pub. Except it wasn't so quiet, because that idiot Moz was working behind the bar and he always insists on playing Death Metal over the pub system. I don't know why Kate puts up with him. You know, he must lose her more customers than he brings in with that mangy crowd of his. Anyway, I did manage to find out a bit about our suspects - turns out that Moz knows them both quite well. He told me that Animal went back up to Scotland about mid December last year. It really pissed off the rest of the guys from Jumping Corpse because they had a few gigs lined up over Christmas and they had to hire a replacement drummer. According to Moz, Animal had a great job offer but had to move quickly. He used to work freelance in IT down here but he was head-hunted by a big programming firm based in Glasgow.
"As for Andy, Avril was right about him and Animal being a couple but they split up shortly before Animal left. The split seems to have hit Andy pretty hard at the time but now he's moved on to 'higher things'. Apparently, the reason why he fell out of sight is that he's become a born-again Christian."
"A Christian? Aren't the ‘born-agains’ a bit set against the whole gay thing?"
"Yeah, it does seem a bit odd, doesn't it? But Moz says Andy joined up with a 'good ole' holy rolling fundamentalist church out in Nailsea."
Under a Ghostly Moon (Jerry Moon Supernatural Thrillers Book 1) Page 12