Eleven New Ghost Stories (14 page)

“I told you she was crazy”.

“She needs help,” I said. We
don’t use words like crazy in the mental health profession. “You
should’ve seen the place; it was like it hadn’t changed for twenty
years. She bought kids’ gloves here the other day.”

“It’s so sad, losing your child.
But didn’t you say you’d seen her outside?”

“Only thought I’d seen her. I
must’ve been wrong, those were old photos, and you’ve seen how old
she is.” Something didn’t add up. I could’ve been wrong, but I
didn’t think I was.

“Alice will know,” said Joyce.
“She’s the librarian. And the local historian. She’s got the dirt
on everyone. Biggest gossip in town, and you know how they love to
gossip around here. She runs the book group; I’ve been telling you
you should go.”

“When is it?”

“Tomorrow night. Still time for
you to go over the material.” She got up and scoured the book
shelves. After a few moments of searching she plucked out a copy of
Life of Pi. “Not a bad choice this time.”

“That’s handy; I’ve read
it.”

As I’d guessed, the book group
consisted of only ten minutes of book talk followed by a
free-roaming discussion on everything from Brangelina to local teen
pregnancies and who the fathers were. Alice was a woman with
glasses much wider than her head. She was long-necked with a
penetrating stare. She was like a woodland creature scanning its
environment, in this case looking for little gossipy titbits to
feast on. Her eyes roamed around the group; she dipped in and out
of the conversations, entering when they got juicy, exiting when
the scandals died down.

We were going to discuss Rose
when all the other women had left. She gave me a wink to suggest
that this was something big, beyond mere book group
chitter-chatter. As soon as everyone else had left, she practically
skipped past the bookshelves to get her records.

After a few moments Alice
returned with a large red ring binder, A3 size, which she placed
down on the table with a sense of relish.

“Nowadays I don’t usually bother
keeping the newspapers, not with the internet. But we used to cut
out all the local stories.”

The binder was a giant scrap
book; thousands of stories had been diligently cut out and stuck
inside. She had bookmarked the page she wanted to show me. She
picked up a large clutch of papers, lifted them over and dropped
them down on the desk with a thud.

What she revealed made my eyes
open wide:

LIGHTNING STRIKES SCHOOLGIRL
DEAD

Me and Joyce were speechless. It
was one of several headlines – the story was unusual enough to have
reached the nationals: Scottish girl killed by lightning; Child
killed by playground lightning; Lightning strikes girl dead in
playground. Only the local paper carried it as a front page story.
In a rather tasteless image they had the girl’s picture
superimposed next to a picture of fork lightning badly pasted over
a picture of a school playground. I recognised the school; it was
on the other side of town; I passed it occasionally.

“______ was in mourning
yesterday after a six-year-old was struck by lightning and killed
in the playground in front of her classmates. Chloe Rutter was
leaving school when she was inexplicably killed as she waited for
her mother to take her home.”

It was her: the girl I’d seen in
the alley. How was that possible? Her name was Chloe; I hadn’t even
known her name.

“My sister-in-law was there,”
said Alice. “They’d just let the wee ones go for the day. And they
were just heading across the playground. Little Chloe, she sees her
mum, Rose, and she goes to run to her. And Rose opens her arms open
wide, ready to catch her and pick her up.” Alice did the motions.
“And just as she was running to her, barely a few yards away,
bang!
”

She struck the fist of her right
hand into her left palm. “Lightning struck – it came right down
from the sky. There was a big flash, and poor little Chloe, she
fell dead just feet from her mum, all burnt-up. Smoke were coming
off her. Dead, instantly. Old Nora, she said she’d never seen
anything like it. No one had; it wasn’t even barely raining.”

I looked at the paper’s date.
Christ, that was 26 years ago. That meant that Chloe was older than
I was! Would’ve been older than I was. God, I’d seen a ghost. I
couldn’t believe it. I’d seen a ghost. And talked to a ghost!

“That’s horrible,” said Joyce,
scanning her way through the press cuttings.

“It’s a terrible thing to lose a
child,” said Alice. “But to lose one like that. Right in front of
your eyes. And it must be, what? A million-to-one chance, getting
struck by lightning?”

“It’s unbelievable,” I said. But
it was well documented. It was the end of the school day; all the
mums and dads were there. And the other children.

“It happened in a flash,” a
parent was quoted as saying. “One moment she was there, running to
her mam, and then she was gone. I’ve never seen anything like
it.”

“What happened to her? Rose, I
mean.”

“She went mad with grief, didn’t
she? Imagine it, losing you own daughter in front of you, killed no
closer to you than you are to me now.

“She disappeared for quite a
while. Institutionalised I mean. No one saw her for months. Her
husband looked after the house; he started drinking. They didn’t
even have the funeral until she got back. And then things settled
down for a bit. But they’d have these rows, these terrible rows.
Then one day, he left. Never seen around these parts again. Just
vanished.

Rose, she never came to terms
with it. Some people reckon she still thinks she’s alive. She used
to talk like she was still alive, and when you tried to tell her
Chloe was gone, she’d get furious. People stopped talking to her
altogether, they got afraid of her. She’s mad, completely
barmy.”

I looked at Joyce and Joyce
looked back at me. I’d seen her. I’d seen a dead girl.

“She bought kids’ gloves off me
the other day,” I said.

“Sad really. But what can you
do? She won’t let you help her. Even after all this time she can’t
come to terms with it. Can’t get over the shock.”

It was tensely quiet in the car
as I drove Joyce back home.

“It couldn’t have been her,” I
said, not believing myself. I wondered if somehow, I’d seen the
newspaper story before, somehow dug that picture from deep within
my memory and imagined the girl behind the shop. But of course I
hadn’t; I was five when that happened and would hardly have been
big into newspapers.

“I’ve heard some strange stuff
in my time,” said Joyce. “But I haven’t heard anything like
this.”

“That’s why she goes out in the
storms,” I said. “That’s why she goes out walking. She’s trying to
find her. She thinks she’s going to find Chloe out in the
storm.”

“But that doesn’t make
sense.”

“None of this makes sense! But
when I saw the girl, it was raining. And she, I mean Rose, she’d
just bought that umbrella…”

“Look, I don’t know what crazy
stuff you’re getting into your head, but you need to leave this
woman alone. She already attacked you once. And you heard what
Alice said about her husband. Never seen again. He could be under
the patio for all you know.”

She was right. I had to put
aside my Florence Nightingale tendencies and stay well away from
this. 26 years Rose had been searching for Chloe. No wonder she was
angry with me. She goes rambling across hills and fields and I
stumble across her in a back-alley by accident.

Why had she appeared to me?
Because of my loss? No, I scattered what was left of Adrian across
Richmond Park where we used to walk together. More than likely she
appeared to people all the time. Who was going to remember a little
girl from 26 years ago except her mother?

I dropped Joyce off and
continued on back home. It had a certain gothic poetry to it. The
woman who chased storms… trudged through the mud every time the
rain fell. And for what? A glimpse of her child, a chance to spend
time with her? Or in the vain hope that somehow, someday, the storm
might return her to her, having once so cruelly taken her away?

I laughed at myself for getting
so melodramatic. As I drove back to my house it started to rain,
only very slightly. But as I stepped out of the car and felt the
cold rain land on my face, drip slowly down my back, I was suddenly
overcome with a feeling of horror. 26 years… walking alone through
the cold… the rain… the mud… chasing a dream, a fantasy. Praying
for rain, despairing when the sun shone. A life in darkness, grey
and cold. Never ending, never changing. A life of loss and futile
hope.

I went in and poured myself a
large glass of wine. Christ, and I thought I had problems. I
thought I could take my mind off it by watching the telly. Even the
latest tensions between Israel and Palestine were starting to seem
like a pleasant alternative.

But just as I thought I might be
taking my mind off it, the weather came on and the girl warned that
more bad weather was coming. And not just any bad weather: the
tail-end of a South-American hurricane. We should expect bad storms
come the weekend. And gale-force winds.

My blood ran cold. Would that
make her happy? A weekend of heavy stormy weather? Would she
prepare? Get her best Wellington boots ready? Her rain-mac,
umbrella?

Then another unpleasant idea
came into my head: what if she wanted to die too? What if she
wanted the storm to take her like it had taken her child? What if
every time she went into the storm, she hoped that she might die
too?

I didn’t sleep well. In fact, I
even dreamt about it. That day in the playground…

The sky was grey, a hint of
drizzle falling. The children were leaving the school building – it
was small, only large enough for two classrooms. The children were
all dressed in their raincoats, with scarves, wellies, gloves,
bobble hats or hoods. They carried lunch boxes, rucksacks, some had
little umbrellas – all small, tiny and adorable.

The parents were waiting on the
periphery. Some of the children ran to them, others walked, some
skipped. Friends waved each other goodbye, brothers and sisters
squabbled. Teachers oversaw from the double-doored entrance,
trading a few words while they did the last of their daily
duties.

Chloe was still by the school
doors. She scanned the hedges, then the front fence, furtively
looking for her mother. There was a rumble in the sky.

I was Rose. I waved
enthusiastically to her. She jumped a little off the ground and
waved happily to me. She wore an expression of undiluted, untainted
pure affection. Sheer joy just at seeing me. I walked a little into
the playground, across a faded hopscotch game. She ran towards me,
arms outstretched. I leant down to catch her and hoist her up. She
giggled and laughed as she sped towards me.

A stream of white fell from the
sky. There was no warning, not even a second, a moment to see or
comprehend the impending terror. She crashed into the crack of
light and the world was torn in two.

I gave up on sleeping after
that. I washed off a layer of sweat in the shower and then took to
the sofa in my duvet and watched whatever dross the television had
to offer.

At some point I drifted over to
the 24-hour news channel. The weather report told once more of the
impending storm. Gale-force winds expected. I changed the channel;
there would be no more Florence Nightingale. I had had my fill of
getting involved in other people’s problems. That’s why I moved up
here – to get away from everything.

But I hadn’t, had I? The postman
would be here with letters from the solicitors this morning. What a
joke. The only reason I’d come out here, decided to hole myself up
in this obscure nowhere in the highlands was that Adrian used to
tell me about it. He’d come to _____ once with his grandparents and
found the place so peaceful, so… absent, of anything. He said it
was the vaguest place in the world. Towns, cities, had personality,
character – ______ had nothing. It was just houses together, people
walking in and out of dream. A human purgatory.

And he was right, wasn’t he? I
was here running away from my problems, Rose was chasing her past.
Even Joyce, bright bubbly Joyce, she was living in her Grandma’s
cottage with her mystery woman, living their life of secrets away
from prying eyes. That day in the 80s when Chloe died, that was
probably the last time the world even noticed _____. One brief
mention in the paper and it vanished once again.

Adrian came here to reset – to
really get away from it all. To try and derail his episodes. And
now I had come here too, to get away from it all. I’d come to my
dead husband’s purgatory, where his presence lingered around every
corner.

I laughed at myself. What a
stupid fool I was.

Tired and unwell, but at least
avoiding a full-on depressive stupor, I pulled myself away from the
house. I wasn’t due in the charity shop that day, but I went
anyway. Stephanie, a stick-thin, easily flustered woman was looking
after things; it was Joyce’s day off. I lied about Joyce asking me
to come in. No it wasn’t because Joyce didn’t think she was up to
it; it was because there was always supposed to be two people
working there and now that we had enough people we should follow
the rules to avoid trouble.

I just didn’t want to be alone.
I knew the lawyer’s papers were just going to upset me. And I
didn’t want to get involved in that other thing either. The radio
in the shop kept reminding me of the impending storm expected this
weekend. I wanted to turn it off.

When I drove home, I
deliberately avoided driving by Rose’s house, which would’ve been
on my usual route. My days of martyrdom were over. When I got home,
I couldn’t look at those papers, which were waiting ominously on
the doormat. Even looking at that first page made me start to cry.
I was in such a mess. How long could I carry on like this? Trapped
in purgatory with nowhere to turn except the past.