Mary Hades (16 page)

“Not for the first time,”
Lacey says. Her eyes flash with wickedness.

I shift uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Seth doesn’t know about my stay in
Magdelena yet. At least he can’t hear Lacey. But the thing is, the Lacey I know would never make a cruel remark like that. She has a mischievous sense of humour, and sometimes it cuts close to the bone, but she’s never cruel. I hear the distant ring of warning bells, and Igor’s words haunt me. Do
all
ghosts become bitter and twisted?

“So, you said something about coming here to get information?” Seth says as he passes me another
Coke. “Did you find anything?”

“Yeah, actually we did,” I say.

Neil directs us over to a quiet table in the corner. There are three stools crammed around a small round table. Seth scoots over, sitting so close his knee is against mine. He flashes me a grin and my cheeks warm. Lacey stands around with her hands deep in her hoody pockets, a sullen expression on her face. When Seth smiles at me, she makes a guttural noise in her throat.

It’s Neil who excitedly begins the tale of meeting Igor. But he tells it like Igor spins his ghost stories,
waxing lyrical about it being his idea, describing Igor’s hat in great detail, even putting on a Yorkshire accent.

“Wait, Igor the ghost tour guy? I know him.
Sort of, anyway. He was friends with my dad, a long time ago,” Seth says.

“We might have to tell him what your dad did,” I say. “Is that going to be okay for you?”

Seth runs his thumb up and down the glass in contemplation.

“If it helps Amy get the peace she deserves, then we can tell him.
”

Lacey
scoffs again. “Shame he didn’t think about that when he watched his dad kill her.”

I try my best not to turn around towards my friend. Neil watches me, narrowing his eyes, picking up on the tension in my body.

“When are you going to wake up, Mares?” Lacey continues. “He’s not a good guy. He might not have
killed
Amy, but he stood and watched a terrible crime without doing anything about it. And now he’s carried on living his life without a single thought about getting justice for that little girl. Dead people have rights, too, you know. It’s not all about the living.”

“
Lacey!”

Seth and Neil both turn towards me. Neil’s pint is halfway between the table and his lips.

“Um, everything okay?” Seth asks.

I shake my head.
“No, not really. I’m… I’m sorry, I have to go.”

I
n my haste to get out of there, my stool tips over and I receive a hard stare from a man in tweed, and a tut from a woman in pearls. I trip over my feet dashing through the pub.

When the cold air of evening hits my skin, tears prick at my eyes. What is going on?
Lacey hates me now? Why else would she taunt me like that?

A heavy weight presses down on my shoulders. I’m tired
of the grey tinge that death leaves on my life, like a cigarette burn on a photograph, growing and consuming everything in its path. I’m surrounded by ghosts, and ghouls, and monsters. I’m half in this world with the other half being dragged to hell, or whatever exists after life. I feel like half a person. I think of the worried expressions on my parents’ faces when they realise I have no friends. It’s because I cloak myself in death and ghosts. I don’t live with the living.

“Mary?”

I turn back to the pub doorway. Seth stands hesitantly, the door half open in his hands. Him stood half in the pub and half out of it seems so much like how I feel. And, in some ways, he is exactly like me. Seth believes he will die in a few days. He doesn’t belong here, either. The barrier he maintains when he’s near me isn’t just a gentlemanly distance; he’s protecting himself, too.

“Take me away from here,” I say.

“Are you sure?” he asks.

I cross that distance between us and put my hands in his. “Yes.”

*

Seth’s
car is unexpected. You would think that a twenty year old mechanic would have some souped up boy-racer car, with a spoiler and alloys, but he drives a sensible Ford. It’s even a newish one. I don’t know much about cars, but it looks like the sort of thing a mum drives when she goes to pick up her young children from nursery.

“Where do you want to go?” he asks.

It’s not quite sunset yet. I rest my head against the window and watch the moors fly past. Seth drives somewhere between safe and fast. He skims the corners and revs the engine when he changes gear. The juxtaposition is him in summation: comfortable and dependable, but somehow dangerous and dark.

“Anywhere.”

“What happened in the pub? It’s Lacey, isn’t it?”

I
tap my fingers against the glass of the window, avoiding Seth’s concerned expression.

“Is she here now?”

“No.”

“What did she say?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

I lean into the window as he takes another corner. “Mary
, is it about me? I don’t want to come between you and your… umm, friend.”

“Ghost friend,” I say. “You can say it. She’s dead. She’s a ghost. She shouldn’t even be here, but…”

But what? What’s the but?

“You can
’t say goodbye to each other,” Seth finishes for me. “You love each other. I know how that feels.”

“You do?” I ask.

Seth lets out a heavy sigh. “I’ve been holding something back. What with everything going on, I wasn’t sure whether to even mention it. Earlier, when you asked why I’d never told my mum about what I saw that night, well, there’s a reason.” He flicks on the indicator and turns off the main road.

“What is it?” I ask. My skin prickles. What if I made a mistake ge
tting in the car with this guy? Another secret? Another lie?

“I need to take you somewhere.”

“Where?”

He turns to look at me, taking his eyes off the road for an uncomfortable length of time. “Do you trust me?”

“Why are you asking me that?” I say.

“Because I need to know if I can trust you, and I guess it would be easier to trust you if you trust me.”
He turns back to the road.

I hesitate. “
That’s not fair. Trust is built up over time. I’ve known you a few days.”

“More than that,” he says calmly. “We’ve been through things together, shared more than most people share in a lifetime. I’ve held your l
ife in my hands. I pulled you to safety on the Ferris wheel. I jumped with you when you told me to jump. That moment was worth a thousand days.”

His quiet voice sends shivers up and down my
bare arms and legs. “I know. I trusted you then. My first instinct was to trust you. But…”

“You don’t trust your instincts, so you don’t trust me,” he says with a sigh.

“No, that’s not true. I’ve always trusted my instincts. I rely on them more than anything.”

“More than your ghost friend?”
Seth raises an eyebrow at me.

“I… I don’t know.” I’d never thought about it like that.
Lacey has always been a support to me. “This is the first time we’ve disagreed about anything. We’ve been through a lot.”

“Tell me about it, I want to know,” Seth says.

“All right. But, you’re not allowed to judge me. Deal?”

“Deal.”

“Lacey and I were in a psychiatric hospital together…” I started, and then I told him the entire story. I told him about the strange monsters I saw at school and how they gave me messages. I told him about meeting Lacey for the first time, seeing this mess of blond hair and black eyeliner peeking over the top of her hoody. I told him about Mo, who put his faith in me even when he didn’t understand me, and about the boy who screamed and was silenced by a killer.

And then I told him what I needed to tell someone but couldn’t. I told him about
Dr. Gethen, and about the way he taunted me. I told him about the night in the abandoned ward when he chased me and I crawled through the vents to get out. I told him about how I made a decision, a decision to face my fears, to face the prospect of death and stop Gethen claiming more victims. Finally, I told him how Lacey sacrificed herself for me, and how she’s been with me as a ghost ever since.

“At
Lacey’s funeral, her mum slapped me,” I say. “She said I was a bad influence on her little girl, and that I’d forced her into that abandoned ward as some sort of game. Lacey stood right next to me, seeming so solid and yet so invisible at the same time. She laughed and said: ‘Pay no attention to that crack-addled bint. She wants to blame you so she doesn’t have to blame herself.’”

“She’s right. You shouldn’t blame yourself. None of it is your fault.”

“Lacey had this hollow look in her eyes all the way through the funeral,” I continue. “She kept joking, pointing out girls she’d had a crush on at school, the members of her family who had been in jail. That kind of thing. But she had this hollow look…” I shake my head. “It went away for a while, but sometimes it comes back. I worry that she’s changing.”

“She died. You can’
t go through death without changing at least a little bit.”

“But what if you change completely? What if my friend isn’t my friend
, anymore?” There, I said it. I finally said the words that have been beneath the surface of our friendship since Lacey’s funeral. The joking around, the energy, the girl I once knew still exists, but it has also changed. There are times when her jokes are cruel and bitter.

“You have to trust your instincts,” he says. The car turns into a car park. I hadn’t even noticed the journey while we were talking.
“Like you are now. There’s no way you would tell me all that if you didn’t trust me.”

The sign next to the c
ar park says Nettleby Royal Hospital. Why would Seth bring me to a hospital?

He parks the car and pulls up the handbrake. The door
clunks
open. It’s drizzling, so I put on my jacket as I close the car door. An empty crisp packet blows across the tarmac.

“What are we doing here?” I say.

Before we move towards the multi-story, multi-building hospital (why are they always so big and stretched out, like a microcosm of a dystopian underground city?), he turns to me and says, “I know this is a bit weird, taking a girl I like to a hospital. But I think it might help you understand me a little better.” He jams his hands in his jeans pockets and looks away. “I mean, I hope so.”

The drizzle becomes a shower, so we hurry towards the grey building. There are fresh coats of green paint around windows and door frames
; it makes me think of the way undertakers put make-up on corpses. I keep my eyes on Seth as we enter the building and are hit by the stale, hot air I’m so familiar with. I watch him instead of seeing the sterile white walls and empty stares of patients. He knows where he’s going. He nods to one or two nurses. He squirts anti-septic serum into his hands and backs through double doors without breaking a step.

We reach a ward that seems even quieter than most. As soon as we’re through the door, a short
, middle-aged woman waves to Seth and then fixes him a disapproving look. She puts her hands on her hips like a mother in the playground.

“It’s not visiting hours, you know,” she says.

“Ten minutes, Fatima. We won’t stay long, I promise.”

The woman glances at me and then back at Seth. A small smile plays on her lips.
“All right. Ten minutes and then you’re out of here. I’m not getting a disciplinary for you, mister.” She waggles her finger at him, but I can tell she’s not really mad.

“Thank you.”

As we carry on down the ward, Seth slows down. His confident steps are gone, and instead, his hands grip the sleeves of his jacket. He lets out a long breath when we reach the door to one of the rooms. He hesitates before opening it.

“Mary, I want you to meet my mum.”

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

It’s the noise of the machines first.
Then the bleach-like smell, hanging in stale air. Then you see the tubes, from her arms, from her nose, like something out of an alien autopsy. Her unmoving body is cocooned in a crocheted blanket. Bronze hair spreads out on the pillow, cushioning her head. Her eyelids are a sallow yellow, bruised looking. They are closed.

Seth moves forward and pats his mother’s hand.
“I have trouble saying goodbye, too.”

“How long has she been like this?” I ask. I hesitate from stepping forward. The sheen on her skin makes her seem like a wax doll. I’m embarrassed to say that my stomach lurches. My natural instinct is to keep away from this sick creature.

“Since the car accident. My dad died and Mum was left in a coma.” He shrugs.

“So you’ve been going through all this alone?” I ask.