Eleven New Ghost Stories (33 page)

“I can’t do it anymore Mum.”

I listened quietly, not saying a
word; feeling very unsettled now. I listened to her talk for a
moment, until I said: “Is this some kind of joke?”

After a brief silence she said
again: “You were right, he’s a lost cause.”

“Fuck off!”

I slammed the phone down and
went to put my shopping away. She’d definitely taken longer to say
the next line after I swore at her, I was sure of it.

It happened again the next
night. I was in the bath that time, so I didn’t answer it. But it
happened at around eight-thirty; I heard the time on the radio.
When I was out, and still dripping wet, I went to the phone and
tried to get the number back from 1471. The automated voice said
that the last call was on the 18
^th
of April. I sat down
and thought about it; that date was almost two weeks ago, and it
was my mum. This was at least the fourth time the phone had rung in
that time.

I came home during my lunch hour
and rang up the phone company to ask them what the hell was going
on. Well, what I asked was if there was something wrong on the
line, because I kept getting strange missed-calls. I didn’t go into
detail because when I tried to explain I kept feeling like I was a
nutcase, and didn’t want to seem like one.

They said they’d have a look at
it. I don’t know whether they ever did or not, but it didn’t change
anything.

I was caught off-guard the next
time. I was just finishing a mundane chat with my dad and put the
phone down for just a moment when it rang again. I picked it up
thinking it would be him, having forgotten to tell me something.
But instead I got...

“Hello. Mum?”

Now was when I started to become
frightened. I felt shivers race up my spine, the voice was so much
clearer this time, it was the same words, but they were
different.

“Mum, I need you to pick me
up.”

They were more anguished, almost
harsh, angry. As if – now stay with me – because I ignored the last
call, I had somehow upset her, even though each word, each breath,
was just as it was before.

I slammed the phone down and
tore out the phone line.

I couldn’t get the words out of
my head, the way she had said them. Who was she? Why was she
calling me? What the hell was going on? I left the phone unplugged,
but the call left me tense all evening.

I was off work the next day, and
when I was coming home I got caught out in the corridor by Mr and
Mrs Sodha. You know the type: very chatty, very friendly, very
nice. But too nice; you smile and you chat, and get away as soon as
possible because they’ll talk at you for ages if you don’t and not
about anything remotely interesting.

But I got sucked–in, in part
because I needed to sign something to do with the deposit scheme.
They made me a cup of coffee, gave me a slice of cake and I ended
up trapped out of politeness. I don’t know why, but after a while
of them jabbering on, I asked:

“Who lived up there before
me?”

No one apparently. Of course, as
they had said to me when I moved in, I was the first person to
occupy the flat since the conversion. But their tone was awkward;
they didn’t like me asking these questions. I could tell they knew
something that I didn’t; it became more obvious the more questions
I asked and I wasn’t going to let them get away with it.

“Who lived here before you?” I
asked. And when they avoided answering I told them I had been
getting some strange phone calls, implying that they had been for
the previous tenant.

Mr and Mrs Sodha looked at each
other, wondering what to say to me. They assured me quickly that
they had not lied to me, or misled me. There had been no previous
tenant in my flat.

But awkwardly, they conceded
that someone who had lived in the house previously had actually
been killed.

They were quick to point out
that the accident had not happened in the house. A woman had lived
there before; her husband had left her and she was forced to bring
up the three children alone. The eldest left school at 16 to help
her mother look after the two youngest. She was described in near
angelic terms; a self-sacrificing girl who got her family through
the toughest of times and put herself second.

Years later, when her brother
and sister were older, she was able to go back to school. She went
to the local art college where she became involved with a troubled
young artist. He was supposed to be really brilliant – they told
the story like it was from the pages of a woman’s weekly. But he
was unbalanced, a mental case, and their relationship was always up
and down. He was supposed to have hit her at one point. Then he got
on drugs, and although she had kept going back to him, that was the
final straw.

She left him for good one night.
Then she was in an accident – a hit and run. Her mother was
supposed to pick her up and found her lying face down in the
road.

You could’ve knocked me over
with a feather at that moment. Was that what was I hearing? The
last words of a doomed girl? An innocent who put herself at the
service of others all her life, struck coldly down in the rain,
dead, like she was nothing to no one?

But there was more to come. In
the aftermath, the boyfriend, the artist, whose name they could not
remember, was accused of the crime. There was a big brouhaha
locally; she was popular with those who knew her and commended for
her social work. But the police could not prove he was at the
scene, or that he had access to a vehicle. He was committed soon
after and they never found the car, or another culprit.

The girl’s family lived in the
house a little longer. But apparently they started to get phone
calls, strange phone calls. They always thought it was him; but
nothing was ever proven. He lived in the area for a while after his
release from hospital, but was forced to leave – they said this in
a serves-him-right sort of way.

They wanted to know what phone
calls I was getting. Could this maniac be back in the area? Pretty
startled, I said it was nothing, just silence at the end of the
line. They looked at me bleakly; when they first moved in, they had
been phoned a couple of times by someone. Someone who had never
spoken, but they could hear them on the other end of the phone,
breathing.

I was upset to say the least.
And they could see it, despite my attempts to hide it. They were
probably more afraid that I would use this as some kind of excuse
to get out of my contract and move out.

I went back upstairs and tried
to make myself some lunch. But I was too shaken, too upset. I
logged-on to the web and started searching; I didn’t trust
second-hand tales told by old couples with nothing better to do
with their life than gossip. I searched through the local stories
on the BBC site; there were a horrifying number of hit and run
stories there.

But the number in Croydon was
few. And the story was there, ‘Hit and Run on Saxon Road’.

I wasn’t prepared to see her
face. She was so young. I suppose now that I think about it, she
was actually older than me, at least when she had had the
accident.

Her name was Catherine; it was
only then did I realise that I hadn’t known her name.

Catherine Holden. I put it into
Google and narrowed my search down to the local press, which had
followed the story in a big way. She was indeed painted as an
angel. Left school to help her mother, worked as care assistant at
a local old peoples’ home. She was described as being caring and
understanding: ‘good with all the residents, even the difficult
ones’.

And then there was him – all but
accused of being the culprit. He was judged to be talented; by who,
I don’t know. But he had had lapses in the past. Catherine was
described as being taken in by his mystique, and by her need to
look after others. But he was ‘troubled’ and could sometimes be
‘violent’. Catherine’s mother was adamant that he had killed
her.

But he was not trialled: ‘Artist
Not Charged with Hit and Run’. There was a lack of evidence.
Anthony Smith – that was his name – did not have a car. They never
found the vehicle responsible; there would have had to have been
substantial damage to it. No vehicle Mr Smith could have had access
to had that kind of damage. And no abandoned vehicle was found that
exhibited any such damage. There were no witnesses; Smith did not
have a ‘satisfactory alibi’, but had recently been committed.

There were no further stories. I
tried to find something more about Anthony Smith. But the name was
too common, and I couldn’t find anything.

I started to cry. Properly cry,
not just a few tears, full on weeping. Those words, those helpless
words: “I only wanted to help him”. A beautiful caring girl run
down like she was nothing. I couldn’t help but think back to my own
girlfriend, who I too had supported and helped, only for her to
piss off with some junky guitarist. Is that what I’d done? Been
seduced by the mystique of it? A musician, a sexy, hot musician?
Allowed myself to be taken advantage of? Let her walk all over me
just because I thought she was out of my league? Had she been at it
for years? Screwing other guitarists then coming home to safe old
me to support her and to clap along to her rubbish lyrics and
stolen cords?

Fucking artists. Prententious
tortured fuckers; they didn’t suffer, just the people all around
them.

Poor Catherine. She deserved
better. We both deserved better.

It was then that I went back to
the phone. I picked up the cord, plugged it back into the slot and
then waited. This time I would know her name, could listen to her
cry, somehow try to touch the troubled soul that was reaching out
to me.

I watched the clock as darkness
fell and it turned round to eight-thirty. But there was no call. I
even picked up the phone to check the line was working. There was
nothing. I called the phone with my mobile; it rang on queue. But
it didn’t happen every night… I didn’t always get the call.

So I waited the next night, made
sure I was at home. And the night afterward – but nothing. She
didn’t call. I felt like I’d abandoned her. That I was the last
person she had tried to reach and I had rejected her. She was lost,
wherever it was that she was. I had left her adrift…

Part of me knew that even if she
had called back, I could do nothing; that she never heard my voice
anyway. But some part of me wanted to do something, anything, no
matter how small. Even if, in the tiniest of ways, just being
there, to listen to her cry for help, somehow meant I could be
there for her – then I wanted to do it.

But she stopped calling. A week
went by – not a call came.

I sank further into depression.
I would come home from work and sink into the sofa. And I do mean
sink; I would bury myself in the cushions, sometimes for hours,
with or without the TV on. I ate only takeout food, anything that
required the least amount of preparation. I put on weight. I looked
pale.

My work suffered. My colleagues
saw me show up with bags under my eyes, my clothes scruffy,
smelling of cigarettes and alcohol. I was eventually called in by
the surgery manager, who gave me a very strict telling off. I
didn’t take it well; I was still drunk from lunch. He said I was on
my final warning.

I hit a new low. That night I
went to the pub and hooked up with the pub slag. You know the type:
dresses too provocatively even for an 18-year-old, but is somewhere
in her mid-forties, and that’s if you’re being generous. Bad permed
hair, cleavage wrinkles, always stands as if she’s holding a
cigarette. I was so pissed I staggered back to her place, a dirty
dump down a back alley with fag burns on the furniture and mould in
the coffee cups. I remember waking up next to her and wanting to
vomit; that sounds excessively cruel I know, but bear in mind that
I had also drank enough to floor a heavy Irish wrestler.

I tried to tidy myself up for
work that morning, but everyone, including myself, knew I was in no
fit state to be there. I told the receptionist that I was going
home ill at lunch. She didn’t believe there was anything really
wrong with me, beyond the obvious.

I went home, and after a short
period with my head amongst the sofa cushions, I started to drink
again. It was the only thing I wanted to do.

I passed out sometime late
afternoon. I don’t know when, all I know is that I awoke when it
was dark.

The phone was ringing. It was a
few moments before I realised what was happening. It was half-past
eight. The room was spinning; I stumbled to my feet. Barely staying
upright, I went for the phone. I picked it up and dropped it.

I fell to my knees with a thump
and scooped it up. It was her, the sweet, but frightened voice
spoke out to me:

“You were right, he’s a lost
cause. I only wanted to help him.”

“Catherine, I’m so sorry,” I
said, my eyes filling with tears. “I’m so, so, sorry. You deserved
so much better. So much better...”

After a short silence, I heard
“Hello?”

My jaw dropped open: she had
spoken to me! I started to tremble. “Hello,” I said back.

“Who’s there?”

She was speaking to me; she was
real, she was alive!

“I’m coming to get you,” I said
triumphantly. “Stay where you are!” I don’t know why I said it, why
I believed that anything could be done. But right then, I believed
that I could save her.

I slammed the phone down and
leapt across the floor. I took my keys, not my coat, out to my car.
It was pouring down with rain. I started the engine without
considering that, A: I was in no condition to drive; and B: that I
had no idea where Saxon Road was. I took off quickly and drove on
to the main road before considering this, but a copy of my trusted
A-to-Z helped me find what I was looking for.