At first she thought that she must have been mistaken. For an instant it looked like Alice was there too, a girl standing beside the woman, who was pointing things out to her. She looked so like the ghost she was trying to help, but as Melinda drew closer she realized that although they were similar, this was not Alice. The woman turned to face her and smiled. There was a sadness in her face that reminded Melinda of the mother she had met in the tired-looking house only the day before. She had no doubt that this was Chrissie.
“You must be Melinda,” Chrissie said. “I was expecting someone . . . older.”
“Thanks, I think,” Melinda said, offering a hand. “And you must be Chrissie.”
“This is Alicia,” Chrissie said. “My daughter.”
“Alicia,” she said. “That’s a lovely name.” She made the connection with the dead sister but said nothing about it. “Your mother didn’t say anything about you having a daughter.”
“Sometimes I think she forgets. Or maybe she just doesn’t want to know. But I thought it was about time they met.”
Melinda wanted to say that the little girl looked so much like Alice, but thought better of it. For all she knew Alicia might not have known about her mother’s sister.
“That would be nice,” Melinda said, but Chrissie’s smile revealed that she was not so sure.
“I take it she’s told you that we haven’t had a lot to do with each other pretty much since Alice died,” she said. Her daughter seemed more interested in something she had spotted in the grass than in their conversation, but Melinda assumed that she had at least heard something of Alice for Chrissie to speak freely about her in front of the girl.
“I suspect that she gave me an abbreviated version. She said that you and your dad moved away but that she couldn’t leave while there was a chance that Alice might come home.”
“We waited five years. Five wasted years.”
“Why do you say that?” Melinda asked.
“Because she was dead, wasn’t she? She died the day she went missing. We weren’t waiting for her to come home. We were waiting for her body to be found, that was all, and none of us could stand it.”
“You couldn’t have thought that at the time,” Melinda said. “You must have been too young to understand.”
Alicia chose that moment to move away from them, slipping her grip from her mother’s hand to get a closer look at whatever was fascinating her.
“This was all so different then,” Chrissie said. “This was just open fields for as far as the eye could see. Even if you looked back toward town, it must have been more than half a mile to the closest house. Now the backyards of houses are going to be only a stone’s throw away. We weren’t supposed to come up here, of course. Dad said it was too dangerous, but Mom didn’t notice if we slipped out of the house. We used to live over there.” She pointed in the direction of a large oak tree which had survived the developers’ attentions. The land dipped away to a cluster of houses that must have marked the edge of the town at some time in the past.
As she turned back she saw that her daughter had moved away from them, hopping in the grass like a frog. The little girl laughed, a giggle that was almost infectious. Melinda could not stop herself from smiling, but Chrissie’s reaction caught her by surprise.
“No!” she snapped, holding out a hand for the little girl to return, but she was having too much fun. She hopped again and again, getting another stern rebuke from her mother. “Come back here this instant,” Chrissie said.
The girl looked back at her mother but then turned and started to run away from them, ignoring her mother’s call. Chrissie started to run after her, but after only a few strides caught her feet in the grass and stumbled, sending her sprawling to the ground.
“Please, stop her,” she cried.
Melinda started after her but found it difficult to run in the heels she had foolishly chosen to wear that day. She paused for a moment to take off one shoe, then the other, abandoning them in her wake to collect them when she returned in the hope that she would be able to run just a little faster.
“Alicia!” she called, but the girl kept running, giggling all the time without turning back once. Melinda knew that the path led to the footbridge over the gorge and she remembered how precarious it had seemed when she had crossed it with Jim all those years ago. Maybe it was in a better state of repair now, but it had not been the kind of place she would have wanted Aiden to cross without someone to hold his hand and keep him safe.
“Alicia!” she called again, still trying to catch up, but it only made the girl run faster. Melinda could not understand how she couldn’t run fast enough to catch her, and she remembered the dream that she had shared with Aiden. The dream where she was chasing Alice, but she wouldn’t stop. Had that been a premonition? Had she really been chasing after Alicia?
She stumbled, almost losing her footing as she caught the sharp edge of a stone and hopped in pain. Despite it all, she kept after the girl until the bridge came in sight and just beyond it the land fell away to the gorge and the river that ran below. She had to stop her before she got that far. She had to run fast, faster. She risked a glance behind at the sound of Chrissie’s cries, but she was not getting any closer.
The girl was almost at the bridge when suddenly she stopped, turned around for a moment, and then started back again. Seconds later Melinda snatched the girl up off the ground only a matter of yards from the bridge. She would not have reached her in time if she hadn’t stopped because of the figure standing on the bridge.
Alice.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chrissie took her daughter from Melinda the moment she reached her side. She was clearly torn between telling her off for disobeying her and putting herself in danger, and gratitude that she was safe. The girl showed no sign of having seen Alice; she didn’t turn to look at her once, but tears of fear ran down her face. Something had scared her enough to make her stop.
“Thank you,” Melinda said in little more than a whisper, but Chrissie still heard her.
“Why did you say that?” she asked. “Who are you thanking?”
Melinda didn’t answer for a moment. Instead she retrieved her shoes and put them back on, wincing at the bruise that was fast forming on the sole of her foot.
“Is she here? Please tell me she’s here.”
“She’s here,” Melinda said.
“I knew this was where she would be. This is where it happened. Please tell her that I am so sorry. I should never have brought her up here.”
“It’s all right,” said Alice. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Melinda passed the message on, but the woman was not really listening. She was close to tears and holding her daughter as tightly to her as she possibly could. The girl was sobbing, pressing her face into Chrissie’s shoulder.
“We should never have come up here,” Chrissie said. “We were told we shouldn’t but we came up here anyway. I wanted to, and Alice tagged along. I couldn’t stop her.”
The ghost protested, but Melinda tried to shut her out for the moment. She needed to hear what Chrissie had to say. She needed to understand what had happened all those years ago, to discover what this was all about.
As the little girl’s sobs subsided, Chrissie relaxed her grip a little as she moved farther away from the bridge.
“We were just playing,” she said, “but Alice wanted to go on the bridge. I couldn’t stop her. I shouted for her to stop but she wouldn’t take any notice of me. She ran onto the bridge and she slipped. Before I could get to her she had fallen into the gorge. The river was running fast, and she was washed away. There was nothing I could do to help. Nothing anyone could do. And we shouldn’t have been there in the first place. It was all my fault.”
“What did you do?” Melinda asked. There was no doubt that Chrissie was distressed, that she was replaying every instant over again i
n her head.
“Nothing,” she admitted. “I did nothing. I pretended that Alice hadn’t come out with me, that I’d gone out on my own and that she was still in the house when I left. I knew that I would be blamed if I told them what had happened. I’ve kept this secret nearly all my life without telling anyone. But it was all my fault.”
Melinda wrapped her arms around Chrissie and the little girl she was carrying, the little girl who almost carried the name of the girl who had died in this place all those years ago.
“Please,” said the small voice beside her. “Please tell her that it wasn’t her fault. Tell her that it was mine and that I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made her take me with her. I shouldn’t have followed her here.”
Melinda took a moment to gather her thoughts. She wanted to make things right and give Chrissie the chance to let go of the past. She wasn’t here to judge anyone—she was here to help.
“Alice said you shouldn’t blame yourself,” she said. “She knows that it was her fault, not yours. She says she’s sorry that you’ve had to suffer because of what she did.”
“But I should still have said something!” Chrissie said.
“What difference would it have made to Alice?” Melinda asked. “It might have made things easier for your mom and dad, but it might just have easily have made it worse.”
“So what happens now?” Chrissie asked, wiping tears from her eyes.
Melinda was about to try to explain, but there was a sudden silence. The machinery on the building site came to a halt, and all she could hear was the sound of birds singing and the flow of the river in the gorge. The clouds lost their grayness, and a light opened up in the direction of the bridge.
“It’s time to go now,” Melinda said, crouching down to Alice’s eye level. The sadness had gone from her eyes and it had been replaced by something else that might have been hope. “It’s time to move on.”
“Thank you,” Alice said and turned away from her. She started to walk slowly toward the light, gradually moving faster until she started to run, pausing just once to wave at her. This time Melinda didn’t run after her. This time she didn’t even call her name.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“She’s gone, hasn’t she?” Chrissie asked as the clouds returned to cover the sun and the sound of machinery filled the air once more. She lowered Alicia to the ground but kept a tight grip on her hand. The little girl had no idea just how much danger she might have been in, but now her mother was not going to let her get anywhere near the bridge again. She was going to keep her safe and secure by her side.
“She’s gone,” Melinda confirmed. She wished she could have spoken to the girl a little longer to reassure her that everything was going to be all right, but maybe she didn’t need to hear that. Maybe she already knew. She had seemed happy and smiling as she had gone into the light and left them behind.
“And she stopped Alicia from going onto the bridge, didn’t she?” Chrissie said. “That was what scared her and made her stop long enough for you to catch up with her?”
“I think so,” Melinda said. “I have a feeling that she was trying to pay you back for all the heartache that she caused you all those years ago.”
“She didn’t—it was all my fault. I was the one who caused all the heartache.”
“Well, that’s the way that she saw it,” Melinda said. “And that was all that mattered. She didn’t want you to blame yourself any longer.”
“Why do you think it took her so long to find me?”
“It’s more that it took a long time for her to find someone who could see her. I have a feeling that you have my son to thank for that. He was the one who was sure that he could see her.”
“Where did he see her? Here?”
“No. He saw her in school.” Melinda explained about the desk that no one would sit at and the fact that Aiden had a gift of his own. “She even sat at a desk with her own name carved into it.”
“My God, is that still there? I’d completely forgotten about it. I thought they would have replaced those desks by now.”
“You knew about it?” Melinda asked.
Chrissie nodded. “She got into so much trouble about that. She carved her name into it when she’d only been there for a few weeks. The teacher made her sit there every break for a month until she learned that she’d done something very bad.”
Melinda wondered if that was why she had gone back there. She thought she had done a bad thing and needed to be punished. It made her sad to think that might have been the case, but at least it meant that she had found her eventually.
“I guess they make things last at that school, but it doesn’t matter anymore,” she said. “She’ll be content now. She’s gone to a better place. A happier place.”
Chapter Forty
“So it’s all over?” Dana asked after Melinda had brought her up to date with everything that had happened.
“Yes, that’s it,” said Melinda as she helped straighten the classroom. Aiden was sitting at the desk that Alice had occupied for so long, writing a note of his own.
“What about the sister?”
“Chrissie? When I left her she was going to see her mother to introduce her to the granddaughter she doesn’t even seem to know that she has. I hope they can work things out. It would be a real shame if they can’t.”
“Do you think she’ll tell her what happened?”
“I really hope not. They’ve hardly seen each other for more than twenty years. I don’t think it’s time to start sharing secrets like that, do you? It will just reopen old wounds that might never have the chance to heal. Some secrets are best kept that way. Once they’ve been buried, it’s best to leave them well alone,” Melinda said, placing the last of the chairs on the desk, ready for the cleaners to come in.
“And what about Alice?”
“I have to believe that she’s gone to a better place than this. Both girls have blamed themselves all this time. Perhaps now they can both let go of that guilt.”
“Do you think the children would be prepared to use this desk now?” Dana asked. “Or will there be something left behind?”
“Nothing but a name carved in the wood, I suspect. It certainly doesn’t seem to bother Aiden, so I’m sure it would be fine. If you rearranged all of them, I don’t think anyone would even notice.”
“I hope this doesn’t mean that I won’t see you anymore, not now that we’ve connected again,” Dana said.
“I don’t know how you can even think such a thing. Why don’t you come around for supper tomorrow? Jim’s out, so it would just be the two of us.”
“Three,” said Aiden.
“Sounds good,” said Dana. “I’ll bring the wine . . . and the ice cream.”
Epilogue
Terri managed to make a story out of it eventually, but her piece said nothing about Melinda, the ghost, or even the university department where Ned was studying. Ned told her about the conversation Melinda had had with Chrissie, and it led Terri to doing a little investigating of her own. Eventually the remains of a body were found some way downstream, and Terri was ready to tie it all in with the girl that had gone missing all those years ago.
The story attracted some attention when she was able to sell it to one of the big city newspapers, which printed it with her byline. It might not have won her any kind of award, but it meant that a few people started to take her a little more seriously.
Eventually the call came, and she got the shot at one of the newspapers she had been hoping to hear from and packed her bags to head for the big city. Ned was glad that he had been able to help her a little on the way, but somehow he never expected to hear from her again.
It took a while for Lowe’s Autos to get back on its feet, yet slowly but surely the customers who’d begun to lose faith in the business began to return. Tom gave Dan a call the night that Melinda visited,
and he was only too happy to come back to work for a few mornings a week. He had developed a full social life once he had overcome the grief of losing his wife and couldn’t afford to give any more time than that, but it was enough to start making a real difference. Within a year Tom had taken on a trainee and Lauren had managed to get a grip on all the paperwork by putting a computer in the office. It seemed to be working well for all of them.
The discovery of Alice’s remains had also brought some closure for her mother. She had no wish to leave Grandview, but at least it had brought her closer to her surviving daughter and the grandchild she had somehow forgotten had even existed. Chrissie started to visit a little more regularly, and while she would never think of this place as home, she was no longer afraid of returning.
About the Author
Steve Lockley is the author of almost a hundred short stories, along with the Sally Reardon Supernatural Mysteries novella series (with Steven Savile) and novels ranging from Young Adult horror to modern day high octane thriller. He has also worked on a number of TV and game tie-in projects including contributions to a couple of Doctor Who anthologies.
He has been nominated nine times for British Fantasy awards, and was presented with the British Fantasy Society Special Award in 1996 for his work on the horror convention Welcome to My Nightmare. He has also served as a judge for the World Fantasy Awards.
Copyright
Ghost Whisperer: The Empty Desk © 2015 by ABC Studios and CBS Studios Inc.
Ghost Whisperer™ is a trademark and a copyright of CBS Studios Inc. Licensed by CBS Consumer Products Inc. 2014. All rights reserved.
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