Glimpse (14 page)

‘I’m going,’ I said, turning from him. ‘I hope you’ve had fun.’

‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Please.’

His voice was so defeated, I couldn’t help but look back. His face had softened. He looked infinitely sad. I scowled in response.

‘I’ve told you nothing but the truth, Elizabeth, and I’ll prove it to you. Don’t walk away.’

I should have kept going, but I didn’t. I marched back towards him, folding my arms. ‘You want to prove you’re a ghost? I’d like to see you try.’

He pulled off his glove and held his hand out to me. ‘Touch me.’

I looked at his hand and rolled my eyes, as much at myself as at him. For a moment, he’d almost taken me in again. I’d actually been interested to see what he’d do. But this was blatantly just another trick.

‘I’m not going to touch you,’ I snapped. ‘Like I said, I’m not an idiot.’

He let his hand fall. His disappointment was so convincing, he must have been the star of his school drama class.

I stormed back to the road, ready to race back to the inn – I couldn’t stand even looking at him any more – but was stopped when car headlights cut through the dusk, heading towards us too fast for me to cross the road to the hedge.

I stepped further back onto the verge with a groan of frustration.

Zachary did the opposite. He stepped into the road.

‘It seems I’ll have to prove myself another way,’ he muttered, as he passed.

‘What the hell are you doing?’

He stood right in the middle of the road, and looked back at me. ‘Making you believe me.’ He spread his arms, and faced the oncoming car.

‘Oh, no.’ Panic flooded my system. I looked frantically from Zachary to the headlights and back again. ‘Don’t be stupid. Get out of the road. Now!’

Zachary just shrugged. The headlights raced towards him, lighting him up like a beacon, bleaching his face. It was happening too fast, I was powerless.

‘Move!’ I shrieked. ‘Move! MOVE!’

But he didn’t move. And the car didn’t stop.

I screamed as it ploughed into him.

The car squealed to a halt, its front bumper grinding into the hedge. I ran forwards. Zachary!

I stopped, gaped, trying to piece together the impossible scene before me. The top half of Zachary’s body seemed to perch awkwardly on the bonnet of the car, like a torso sculpture set on a plinth. Arms spread, jaw clenched. Looking right at me. Then he moved – or it moved – and from the side of the car, Zachary emerged, walking towards me, entire and solid and alive-looking as before.

I gasped, inhaling burnt-tyre fumes. I was going to be sick. Right there and then, I was going to vomit. I clapped a hand across my mouth and whimpered into it.

The car door burst open. A man with a shaved head and tattooed arms leapt out. He looked at me, then back at his car. ‘What the hell just happened?’

‘You . . . you ran over someone,’ I whispered into my fingers.

‘What?’

I dropped my hand. Panic bubbled in my lungs. ‘You ran over a boy!’

The man’s face twisted, draining of colour. Then he turned and dived towards the front of his car. He sprawled on the concrete. ‘Where?’ he yelled. ‘Shit, I don’t see him! It’s too dark.’

Zachary looked at me from the side of the road, his expression solemn and resigned and more than a little sympathetic.

‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s . . . he’s not under there.’

The man levered himself up from the concrete. His face wasn’t white any more. Even in the dim light, I could see it was blotched over with red. His expression was shifting rapidly from panic to something I liked even less.

‘Then what the hell do you mean I ran over a boy?’

‘He’s . . . he’s there.’ I pointed at Zachary, my whole arm shaking.

The man stared at me. ‘Are you crazy?’

‘No!’ I staggered into the road and held a trembling finger an inch from Zachary’s chest. I could see his ribcage rising and falling, muscle and bone moving. ‘Here! He’s here! I don’t know . . .’

There was a long silence. The man stared at me, not blinking.

Finally, the man’s face loosened and he let out a long breath. ‘Shit,’ he muttered. ‘Shit.’ Still muttering under his breath, he turned back to his car and examined the paintwork on the bonnet. ‘Any damage, you’re paying.’

I stared after him, my finger still an inch from Zachary’s jumper. I couldn’t look at Zachary. I let my arm hang.

This couldn’t be happening.

‘Elizabeth.’

I gave my head the tiniest of shakes. No. No, no, no.

‘Elizabeth, look at me.’

I had no choice. Very slowly, I turned, my lungs growing tighter with each degree as though they were in a vice. I met his gaze, and gave my head another tiny shake. I didn’t want him to say anything.

‘He cannot see me.’

No, please don’t say any more.

‘Hey, crazy girl!’ the man called. ‘You escape from some mental ward or something?’

I looked back at the man. I shook my head.

‘Then get out of the road. If you’re still here when I drive back this way, I’m calling the police, got it?’

The car reversed out of the hedge and skidded away. Zachary and I were left alone.

‘Come on. Let’s move out of the road.’ He gestured at the grass verge, and, not knowing what else to do, I stumbled to where he pointed. He followed me, keeping his distance.

I collapsed to the ground and dropped my head into my hands. The cold seeped through me. My lungs rasped. There was no way that what I had just seen could have happened, for real.

But I had seen it. Maybe I was crazy after all. Maybe I still had brain damage from the crash.

Zachary crouched to the ground near me, still a respectable distance away. I stared at him between my fingers.

‘I apologize for putting you through that,’ he said. ‘It was the only way I could think to prove myself to you.’

I gulped. ‘Am I imagining you?’

He gave a wry smile. ‘I’m real, Elizabeth. As real as you are. I’m simply not alive.’

‘You’re really . . . you really think you’re . . . dead?’

He nodded.

My breath hiccuped into my hands, half hysteria, half sob. ‘Oh my God,’ I whispered.

My brain felt like a match that wouldn’t ignite. My thoughts struck against each other –
He’s dead, he’s a ghost
– but failed to flare into anything that made sense.

‘You seemed ready to accept that you saw spirits before,’ he said, softly, ‘why do you find it so hard to believe now?’

I shook my head, still holding my hands to my face. ‘But you’re nothing like . . . like them. You don’t make my skin burn. You’re so fully formed. You’re too real.’

Funny, then, that having this conversation was so thoroughly unreal.

I bit my lip hard enough for it to hurt. Part of me wanted him to tell me this was all a trick. But there was a dense, frightened mass deep inside me that knew he wouldn’t, knew it wasn’t.

Zachary’s face was unreadable in the almost-darkness. ‘I don’t know why you ever thought me alive,’ he said. ‘There have been others at the inn who were able to see me, but no one has ever mistaken me for a living man.’

He sat down on the grass next to me, stretching out his long legs, sending a gust of earth scent my way, which had made me think of trees before, but now made me think of freshly dug graves.

The sun had dipped below the horizon and the sky was almost entirely pencil-lead grey. It felt like the normal world had followed the sun over the horizon too, leaving me in this cold, dark universe that made no sense.

Bats swooped and darted in the twilight above us. The moon was full, and its rays shone down on Zachary, lighting up his tangled hair.

I let my hands fall from my face. I wrapped them instead around my locket, as if for protection. The metal felt cold but reassuring.

‘How long have you been . . . like this?’ I whispered.

‘A long time. Longer than you’ve been alive.’

I nodded, and shivered. Once I started shivering, I couldn’t stop. The night had turned so cold, so suddenly.

He was dead. I saw ghosts. But none of the other spirits I had ever seen were anything like him.

Then I remembered Meg telling me she’d learned how to see spirits so they looked almost like living people. That was happening now, with Zachary.

I sat up straighter, just as scared, but more focused.

‘I’ve considered our connection many times since I realized you thought I was alive,’ Zachary said, as if joining in with the conversation in my head. ‘Elizabeth, I believe we were intended to find each other.’ He looked at me. ‘It’s many years since I believed in God or fate, yet our meeting cannot be an accident. You’re clearly a powerful spirit-seer. You can help me. And I can help you.’

I shook my head, clasped my locket tighter. ‘I can’t help you.’

‘Yes, you can,’ he said gently. ‘I’m searching for someone. A fellow spirit. There’s nothing in this world more important to me than finding her. If you help me, I’ll owe you an eternal gratitude.’

He sat very still, waiting for my reaction, almost as tense as the moment before he’d told me he was dead. His shadowed eyes glittered like cut glass in the darkness.

‘You want me to look for a ghost for you?’ My voice was a squeak.

‘I do.’

My throat constricted. The whole point of this meeting had been to find out how to get rid of the Glimpses, not to sign up for going out and finding more! I hugged my knees to my chest. I knew I should run. I should jump to my feet right now, and run like the wind. Instead I stayed stock still, and began to consider what it would mean to offer to help him.

I looked at him. I could make an excuse for why I couldn’t help him. But I had been stripped bare by everything I had seen, heard, felt out here tonight. It was too late for lies.

‘Here’s the problem,’ I said, my voice almost a whisper. ‘I might be able to see you, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to see anyone, anything, like you.’

He nodded. I could practically see the hope drain out of him, the way the last of the light had drained from the sky.

‘I understand,’ he said. ‘I realize the weight of what I’m asking you. I also know I cannot do much to help you in return. Yet I would do anything, within my power, to repay you.’

But you can’t help me not see you.

A long moment passed.

‘Are you frightened of me?’

‘No.’ I said it automatically, but then I considered it, and was surprised to find I’d spoken the truth. ‘I’m not scared of you. You seem a good person. I’d help you for sure if you were . . . like me. What I’m scared of is being able to see you at all. I’m scared of what it means about me.’

‘It simply means your abilities are powerful,’ he said. ‘If you understood them better, perhaps your fears would lessen. And that is something I can help with.’

I chewed my lip. ‘How?’

He hunched his shoulders around his tall frame. ‘If you help me, I would help you in every way I can. I cannot tell you how to stop seeing me, but I can tell you all I know about how the spirit world works. About who can see me, and who cannot. I can help you understand yourself.’

An ember of hope flickered to life in my chest. ‘And you could tell me everything you know about my mum,’ I said, my voice stronger. ‘I don’t remember her, and I want to.’

The shadows shifted as he smiled. ‘I could. And I would.’

Maybe I was stupid, but the low hum of excitement had overtaken my jittering nerves. Maybe Zachary was right, and this was meant to be. Other than Meg, I was the only one who could help him. He was the only one who could help me.

For the first time, my Glimpse-seeing abilities would be useful. And maybe if I helped him, if I understood my Glimpses better, I could find a way to make them stop. Or, at least, take away some of their power of frightening me.

I considered a moment more, but I already knew what I was going to say. I’d spent seven years trying to escape my Glimpses, and it hadn’t got me anywhere. This was the only way.

‘Okay.’ I shrugged. ‘Let’s do it.’

Zachary beamed, and he was bright as the moon. Despite myself, I smiled too, though my smile felt weak as cake mix.

Then he took off his glove, and stretched a tentative hand across the space between us. ‘Shake on it?’ he asked.

I looked at his hand, and my nerves clawed their way back out from under my excitement. It was one thing agreeing to look for ghosts, quite another to touch one. But somehow, I steeled myself. I’d survived the last hour, and felt far stronger than I would ever have expected to. If I could handle everything else, I could handle this. Literally!

As I reached for his hand, I could feel my heartbeat in my fingertips. I braced myself for the sensation I’d felt on the rare occasions Glimpses had touched me – a thickening in the air, something physical but soft as moth’s wings or spider’s feet.

I inhaled sharply as my fingers touched his. It was like touching something in a dream – real, but at the same time not. Otherworld. His hand enclosed mine, warm, his skin rough, more solid than a normal Glimpse but still not solid enough. Touching. Not touching.

We pulled our hands away at the same time. Zachary touched his palm with his other hand, as though reliving the feel of me. He looked as dazed as I felt.

‘Have you touched someone like that before?’ I asked, my voice barely more than a breath.

He shook his head. ‘Not so strongly.’

‘Me neither.’

The bats dived in the grey-black sky above us. Night frost bit hard, but I could still feel the rough warmth of his hand.

I hugged my knees again, and made a concerted effort to pull my mind back to reality before it floated off too far, too fast.

‘So tell me who you want me to look for,’ I asked.

Zachary pulled his glove back on before answering. ‘Her name,’ he said, ‘is Bess.’

I looked at him sharply. ‘Bess?’

He nodded.

‘But you don’t mean . . . Bess, as in the landlord’s daughter?’ I prompted.

Zachary’s face blanched, turning him even paler – something I hadn’t thought possible. ‘You know her?’

I shifted into a crouch, in an effort to stay still. ‘Bess, as in the landlord’s daughter, plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair?’ I was incredulous.