The Ghosts and Hauntings Collection

by Cat Knight

  For a moment they just stood there, looking at each other, as if a silent conversation was playing out. Claire turned the doorknob.

  “Claire,” Sarah said. Her voice was high pitched and cracking.

  Claire paused.

  “Please,” Sarah said. “Please let’s go home.”

  Claire pushed the door open and walked inside.

  Chapter One

  London

  United Kingdom

  December 2017

  She had gotten very drunk the night before; sitting by herself in a bar, knocking back whiskey after whiskey until she was kicked out and had to stagger home through the London streets. When her alarm went off that morning she wanted to smash it with a hammer, but even through her pain she knew that anger was more directed at herself than anyone else. She had known she had an early start that day. Had known it for weeks now. But still, drinking was the only way she was going to get any sleep that night. It had been the only way she could sleep for days now, ever since she had made this decision.

  She arrived at the station early, dragging her case behind her. After picking up her ticket she tried and failed to choke down a sandwich, before spending ten minutes in the bathroom wondering if she was going to throw up. That sensation, she knew, probably had little to do with the hangover.

  In the train windows, her reflection looked drawn and gaunt against the turbulent grey sky beyond.

  Older than her twenty-six years. Although she had looked older than her years for a very long time now. Felt it too.

  She tried to relax but knowing her destination made the journey impossible to enjoy. Simultaneously she wanted it to last for ever and end quickly. Every slowly passing second was a tightening screw, albeit one that brought her closer to the things she had been running from for more than half of her life.

  She dreaded the moment the landscape became familiar. The fields, orchards and rivers that surrounded the village where she had grown up had soured over the years; even the best memories curdling like off milk as the moment that had been the dividing line between then and now infected all of them.

  A slow cancer, moving outwards from the nexus point of one stupid, childish choice.

  She leant her forehead against the cool glass and closed her eyes. It soothed her pounding head somewhat, although maybe that wasn’t what she wanted. Maybe the real reason she had gotten so drunk last night, and the reason for all of those other nights and all of the other stupid things she had done, was the vague sense that she deserved it.

  Was that masochistic, or just the smallest, most pathetic attempt to balance things out again? She supposed it didn’t matter now. She opened her eyes and forced herself to watch the landscape change.

  Maybe she should have given London a grander goodbye.

  The city had been her home for a very long time after all. She had worked, studied, loved and lost there, made friends and planned a career all while that weight kept pulling her down until finally she had to roll the dice that would either cut it off for good or allow her to finally succumb to it. She wasn’t even sure what she wanted more.

  But, as the train moved, she knew that what really terrified her wasn’t the ultimate destination of her trip.

  It was everything that would come before that. Everything she had long since convinced herself she had escaped. The pointing fingers and accusing eyes, the forced smiles.

  All that hate and blame. Feeling like you deserved something did little to make you want to face up to that.

  She had been on this train for a while now but the dread of familiarity had yet to shift into the awareness of it. She would have thought she’d have recognised the landscape by now. Or at least remember it from previous trips, because it was surprising that she could forget this. The grass was almost all dead in all directions, the orchards sparse and sad, bare tree branches reaching towards the grey sky as if begging for help. But not even the threatened rain could help this land. It looked dead and decayed, a long way from the green fields she knew so well.

  But then…

  She frowned. Something about the way those sad orchards lined up, the hills behind them and the placement of the fences was familiar, like a grey sketch of a famous painting. And that small cluster of houses looked a lot like the farm that marked the outskirts of her village and…

  And in that moment Claire knew. She was home, and home was worse than she had dared suspect. The rot, it seemed, had not just permeated her life. As the train pulled into the village proper and she took in all those sights she had once known so well, a deep, hollow sadness took the place of niggling fear.

  Once this village had been vibrant, pretty and somewhat quaint – the perfect place to retire or bring up your kids, the kind of English village that adorned postcards. Now it looked as though all the colour had been sucked out of it, taking with it the life.

  The paint was faded, bricks were cracked and worn, streets uneven. Looking at it all framed against the grey sky it was hard to imagine that the sun ever shone here. Around her, other passengers had stopped looking out the windows, returning their eyes to their phones and books and newspapers, turning away because they could turn away from the bad place, could ignore this terrible feeling of wrongness and go on to their destination with only the barest prickle of an uncomfortable memory.

  They did not need to call this void home. They did not need to come back here to right a terrible wrong.

  As the train pulled to a halt and she gathered her things, she wished with such acute pain that she could be one of these simple ignorant people, averting her eyes until the land was pleasant and the world made sense again.

  To be protected from the pain by those thick glass windows. She wasn’t sure she had ever been so jealous of anyone. She had dressed warmly but the cold still bit to her skin as she stepped on to the otherwise empty platform.

  She ignored her momentary desire to jump back on to the train and stay there until she was far away from here.

  The moment to turn away was gone and there was no point regretting it. Claire Anderson was home.

  Chapter Two

  Arundel

  South Downs

  West Sussex

  United Kingdom

  December 2017

  When she was a kid the streets of the village would be bustling at this time of day. Neighbours stopping for a chat, impromptu coffee dates, kids playing openly in the grassy central strip; that vibrant sense of community that made you know that this was where you belonged, that here was safety and warmth and love.

  She saw barely anyone now, as she walked up the footpath, half the shops she had gone into with parents and friends growing up were closed.

  The ones that were open were largely empty; shelves poorly stocked and attendants sitting at their desks staring blankly at nothing.

  With colour had gone life; energy and passion drained away until nobody even had the wherewithal to just leave and go somewhere brighter.

  She had thought that over the years her guilt had faded away to just a dull throb, always there in the back of her mind but never dragging her down or overcoming her like it used to.

  That had been part of the reason she had chosen to return now, because it was the first time she had felt like she could really face the village. But seeing it all again brought that feeling back, growing larger and uglier with every step, that horrible twisted up sense of hateful wrongness inside that made Claire wish she had stayed on that train and just kept going until she was far away from all of this.

  She hadn’t even realised she was outside the bakery until she saw the old sign; faded now but with the same image as ever hanging above the propped open door. Claire paused for a moment then walked inside.

  Kev was one of those men who had always been old; tall and thin with a fringe of grey hair behind his ears and the kind of bushy moustache that seemed to be designed to mock his pate. Nonetheless he always been like a favourite uncle to the kids of the village. Famous for his amazing milk
shakes and patience for deluges of after-schoolers descending on his bakery and barely buying a thing.

  Their parents used to tell them to stay away and leave him alone, but Kev didn’t seem to mind and so the kids never stopped visiting. Like all the other shops there were no customers. Kev, looking the same as ever, moved around behind the counter, polishing things in his leisurely way.

  He stopped upon hearing someone enter and then he turned. Claire, watched his eyes go wide and for a second Claire wondered if this had been a stupid mistake.

  Despite the weirdness of the village, she was flooded with happiness when his face split into the familiar grin, a grin that not even the terrible rot that had claimed this place could destroy.

  “Am I hallucinating?” he said.

  “You’re not that lucky,” Claire replied with a smile, as Kev rounded the counter and embraced her.

  They stayed like that for a moment before Kev let her go and took a step back, looking her up and down.

  “Skinny,” he said. “You need some fattening. Milkshake, extra syrup?”

  “I could think of nothing better,” Claire said, muscle memory directing her to a nearby seat as Kev got to work, asking as he did how she was, what she had been doing, how the city had treated her but never once asking what had kept her away or brought her back. Some questions didn’t need to be answered.

  “How are you?” Claire cut him off mid-stream.

  He faltered momentarily, glancing back at her. “Fine, fine,” he said. “You know how small villages are. Nothing ever changes.”

  Claire glanced out the door behind her. “I don’t know how true that is.”

  Kev followed her gaze. For a moment he just stood, staring out into the grey day.

  Then he shrugged and got back to work. “I suppose,” he said. “When you live here it’s incremental. Things shift so slowly that you have no idea it’s happening until it’s all ancient history. Must seem different to you.”

  Claire nodded. “But not surprising. It’s worse than I thought, but I knew things would be bad.”

  Kev finished the milkshake and brought it round. He sat as he passed it to Claire and for a moment neither spoke as she sipped.

  It was bittersweet – the taste of a memory she’d thought long dead. A memory part of her had hoped was dead.

  “You don’t look well,” Kev said. It was neither patronising nor concerned. Just a statement of fact.

  “What did you expect?” Claire said.

  “Didn’t expect much, but I did hope,” Kev said.

  “Hope what?”

  His smile was sad. “That’d you’d moved on.’”

  The silence that hung over the table was no longer comfortable. Claire kept her eyes on her drink. “How could I?” she said.

  “What happened wasn’t your fault.”

  “I appreciate it, but that doesn’t make you right.”

  “You’ve always been too hard on yourself.”

  “Funny, the rest of the village didn’t think that,” Claire said. “I felt like I was never hard enough.” “They are stupid and narrow minded.” Kev’s voice had more bite than Claire had ever heard there before. “They live in their little bubbles because they like everything just so and when something happens that challenges that they try to drive it away.”

  “I can’t blame them,” Claire said. “It was a big something.”

  “And you were eleven,” Kev said. “You were a couple of kids doing what kids have always done and there was no way you could have known how it was going to go. No way any of us could have known.”

  Claire met his gaze and was surprised to see tears there. All of her own had long since dried up.

  “There were rumours, weren’t there?” Claire said. “For years, all that talk. I thought I was so damn smart. Proved myself very wrong there.”

  “Stupid kids don’t deserve to be punished for being stupid kids,” Kev said. “Even when they grow up to be stupid adults. Why are you here, Claire?”

  She couldn’t meet his eyes now.

  “Just visiting.”

  “Rubbish.”

  “Haven’t been back since I left. Figured it was time.”

  “That’s a lovely story. What’s the true one?”

  She looked back out the door. “I want to put things right.”

  Kev leaned forward.

  “You went through as much – more than the rest of them. Not only did you lose your best friend, not only were you there when it happened, but you came out of there only to be blamed for all of it for the next few years. Who are you putting things right for Claire? For the people who turned on an eleven-year-old girl who had just been through a trauma they could barely understand?”

  “There was more to it than that and you know it,” Claire said. “I don’t love how I was treated Kev, but I get it. What happened to Sarah was my fault. If I hadn’t pushed her into it, if I hadn’t insisted we go in that house even though… even though I…”

  That old dizziness – that feeling of her head swimming and her heart starting to race as something prickled in her eyes – was back. She knew this feeling.

  She hated this feeling. She tried to stand but was shaking too badly. She closed her eyes and took several long, deep breaths. When she opened them, Kev was watching her steadily. “It’s time to let go,” Kev said.

  “I agree.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “Letting go.”

  “How?”

  Claire looked away.

  “They won’t forgive you,” Kev said. “They’re too twisted up. So how…” he trailed off. When he spoke again his voice was quiet. “You can’t.”

  “It’s the only way,” Claire said.

  “It’s suicidal.”

  “I have to try.”

  Kev grabbed her hand. “No, you absolutely do not. Sarah is gone, Claire. There’s no other way around it. She’s gone and she’s not coming back and nothing you do will change that, not for you or her parents or anyone.”

  “I can bring them closure,” Claire said.

  “Nothing will fix what they lost.”

  “But saying goodbye might help them,” Claire said. “I owe them that much, Kev. I owe this village that much.” Tears were running down Kev’s cheeks now. He wiped them off.

  “This village eradicated any debt you had by making you a pariah. I won’t see you die for them.”

  Claire got to her feet. “It won’t be for them,” she said. Then she turned and walked back out on to the street.

  She took a few moments to compose herself, before continuing on her way. As she did the wind picked up, turning from a moan into a howl that moved between the streets, coming from a direction she knew all too well, a direction she had looked in countless times over the years that had finally brought her to this moment.

  Soon.

  She saw a few more people as she walked, leaving the main street and entering the blocks of houses. Some ignored her. Others stopped and stared as she passed – usually the ones she recognised. She didn’t insult them or herself by smiling or waving. She wasn’t wasting her time on false pleasantries.

  It was harder to ignore the yells, when they came. Little old Mrs Shannon, somehow still alive, screaming murderer from her front porch, trying to get up and hobble towards her.

  Rotund Mr Herbert telling her to go back where she came from. Hearing that stung. Part of her had hoped things would have changed, but she had heard it all before and with more venom and anger.

  After so many years it felt like a tired reflex, an action taken more because they didn’t know what else to do than out of any real fury. The memory of an emotion rather than the thing itself.

  Being back brought back many feelings but, as she got closer and closer to the house she had grown up in, fear, anger and guilt were slowly outweighed by a deep, aching sadness.

  She had not told her parents she would be back; they would have begged her to stay away, and while she was sure t
hey would welcome her she wasn’t sure she was ready for what would follow. The averted eyes, the silent dinners, the feeble attempts at cheeriness always tempered by the never-ending desire to press her. The patterns she had gone through day after day until that blessed moment she could leave. What happened in the house? What she had done? Whose fault it really was.

  Her silence had confused and frustrated them even as it slowly turned their family into one the village blamed and avoided. Most kids never had to learn that love was seldom unconditional, that there were boundaries to what a parent could deal with.

  Claire supposed it had been a valuable lesson, but that didn’t mean it was one she had ever appreciated having to learn.

  Like everything else here, the house looked like a washed-out facsimile of the one she had known; all the parts the same, but somehow just… less. She had been so proud of it as a kid, of its size and beauty and the explosion of colours that made up their garden. She could never imagine wanting to live anywhere else. For a long time since she had struggled to imagine setting foot inside again.

  But here she was, standing at the end of the long sloping driveway, looking up at the front door she had run through so many times; and trying to muster up the courage to knock and ask for permission to enter her own home.

  Perhaps she should have been upset by this. But then she supposed Kev was right about incremental changes. It was very easy to get used to pain when it started small and worsened slowly. She took her time walking up the garden path, letting her eyes move over it all.

  The bushes, the grass, the cobblestones beneath her feet, the broken old birdbath that nobody had ever gotten around to fixing, all remained as they were, yet somehow, more broken.

  She took in everything because she had not seen any of it in years, she may never see it again, and it delayed the moment of having to knock.

  But that moment arrived, in that way all moments you attempt to delay do; far too soon. She stared at the wooden door and tried to muster courage that seemed to have fled. She raised her hand, then dropped it again. She clenched and unclenched her fists. Then, moving fast as if she was tearing off a band aid, she knocked. For a moment, she heard nothing and it was very close to a relief.