The Secrets of Ghosts (21 page)

That’s your imagination, she told herself. She’d seen blood so she expected to smell it. Stupid brain. A wave of sickness washed over her and she swallowed to keep it down, bolting for the ladies’ toilet, just in case.

Katie ran cold water over her wrists and took several deep breaths, willing herself not to be sick. After a while, the nausea passed and she turned off the cold tap. She stared at her face in the mirror while her mind ran over the last ten minutes in a kind of holding pattern.
We’re sorry, but Katie is not available to take your call at the moment. Because she is freaking the fuck out
.

Katie blinked, trying to focus. She’d seen a ghost. Another ghost. It was nothing like Violet, though. It was terrifying. And sad. Overwhelmingly sad. Her face in the mirror was streaked with tears so she splashed water over her face, too.

Katie dried her hands and headed outside. Anna was back in their spot, lying on the grass and watching the match.

‘You okay?’ she said.

‘No. Definitely not.’ Katie took a deep breath. She was too upset to think about lying or evading. She had to tell someone, had to say it out loud. ‘I just saw a ghost.’

‘Really?’ Anna sat up. ‘Here?’

Katie nodded. ‘In the pavilion. The blond boy. I met one at The Grange. Violet. I’ve been talking to her, but this one was different. He couldn’t hear me. Just killed himself.’

‘Killed himself?’

‘With a razor blade. I guess he must’ve committed suicide and now is reliving it or something.’

‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’ Anna said. She poured her a tumbler of water and passed it across. ‘Drink this.’

‘Thank you.’ Katie took a sip and felt a little better.

‘Are you sure they’re ghosts?’ Anna said. ‘In
Doctor Who
they always turn out to be aliens or something. There was one where the ghosts were Cybermen.’

Katie couldn’t believe how well Anna was taking the news. ‘Violet’s not a Cyberman. Trust me.’

‘I do,’ Anna said.

‘Thank you,’ Katie said. ‘I know it’s a lot to take in.’

Anna pulled a face. ‘After my gran died, she used to visit me. She stood at the end of my bed.’

‘Really? That sounds—’

‘Horrifying,’ Anna said. ‘I know. But it really wasn’t. There was just a lovely comforting feeling. I knew she was watching over me.’

Katie drank the rest of her water. There was nothing comforting about the boy in the shower. She didn’t want to see ghosts everywhere. Violet was one thing. At the hotel. Contained. This was different.

Chapter 13

Katie had never wished she drank hard alcohol more. She’d called and Gwen was on her way, but as she sat on the bench outside The Red Lion she wished she could down a whiskey or two. Anything to numb the panic a little, to calm the twisting thoughts. She kept seeing the boy from the cricket pavilion, the blood running down his arms.

‘Honeybunch.’ Gwen swooped down and hugged Katie. ‘Tell me.’

Katie went through it again, adding more detail than she had on the phone. The way she’d smelled the blood, the blackness of the boy’s eyes. She felt a little lighter as she did so and she wondered if Gwen was using a spell or whether it was just comforting to talk to her. Katie still didn’t know if she was going to be angry, tell her to be more careful, so when Gwen patted her and said, ‘It’s going to be okay,’ she almost cried with relief.

‘I don’t know how much research you’ve managed to do,’ Gwen said, ‘but I went to see a woman whose family has a history of this kind of thing.’

‘A family like ours?’ Katie said. ‘How did you find her?’

‘She found me,’ Gwen said. ‘Her name’s Hannah Ash. She lives on a canal boat and passes through this way quite often.’

Katie didn’t know what to say; she’d never considered the possibility that there were other magical families. ‘Do you trust her?’

Gwen shrugged. ‘I think so. I’m not about to rush out and start swapping secrets, but I did talk to her about you—’ Gwen broke off and held up a hand. ‘Don’t worry, nothing too personal, but I did ask her about this ghost thing.’

‘We need all the help we can get,’ Katie said, touched that Gwen had spoken to someone about her. Gwen tended to deal with everything on her own and Katie knew speaking to an outsider wouldn’t have been easy.

‘That’s what I thought,’ Gwen said, not looking happy about it. ‘For what it’s worth, she said there were different types of ghosts. Some are hardly here, more like echoes of a life. Others are fully formed spirits or souls. They have will and personality and feelings, just like any human being.’

‘Aren’t they human, still?’

Gwen shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Hannah said they might look like us and sound like us and sometimes even act like us, but they’re something else. Something other.’

Katie was finding it hard to concentrate on Gwen’s voice. There was a woman on the town green. She had her back to the town and seemed to be staring out over the river. There was something odd about her. Katie focused on the woman’s feet, but they were firmly planted on the grass. Her body looked solid and wasn’t doing the weird shimmery, vibration thing that Violet was so fond of.

‘What?’ Gwen said and turned to follow Katie’s gaze. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Ghost,’ Katie said. She’d finally worked out why the woman seemed odd: she was wearing strange clothes. Old things that belonged in another time. A brown dress in a rough material and a woollen shawl. Her hair was long and matted and there were stains down her back. There was the smell of burning, too. Not like the struck match that she’d detected at the hotel, but a proper bonfire. Wood smoke and something else. Something meaty that turned Katie’s stomach. She stood up. ‘Can we walk?’ Without waiting for Gwen, Katie headed towards the main road, away from the green.

Gwen was looking around. ‘They’re here?’

Katie blinked back sudden tears. ‘I’m starting to think they’re everywhere.’

‘It’s amplifying,’ Gwen said. ‘Makes sense.’

‘Does it?’ Katie was walking fast, but it didn’t feel like enough. She wanted to run.

‘When my power came in, I managed to control it quite well.’

Of course, Katie thought.

‘But when I moved back to Pendleford, I couldn’t any more. I couldn’t stop it from happening, even though I really didn’t want to use it.’

‘Really?’ Katie slowed down a little and looked at Gwen. ‘You had trouble?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Gwen said with feeling. ‘Lots. But it got better. I stopped resisting it and it just got easier to handle. It was like it stopped fighting me when I relaxed.’

‘I’ll try,’ Katie said. She didn’t know how she was going to relax around the scary spirits, but she’d do her best. ‘Maybe I’ll get used to it.’

‘I wish you didn’t have to,’ Gwen said. ‘I know I’ve been preoccupied, but I’m going to look into it more. There might be a spell that can help.’

‘Thank you,’ Katie said.

‘Of course,’ Gwen said, pulling Katie in for a hug. ‘You don’t have to do this alone.’

Chapter 14

This ghost was unmistakable as anything else. He was clearly one of the echo-type ghosts Gwen had talked about, the ones that were barely here at all. He was faded and semi-transparent; if Katie concentrated she could make out the art nouveau pattern on the tiles in the fireplace he was standing in front of. Leaning, really. He was leaning against the mantel in a pose that suggested he ought to have a pipe in one hand. His hand was in his pocket. He was wearing a suit with loose-cut trousers, a waistcoat and a pale shirt with honest-to-God cufflinks. They shone as if lit by the glow from a fire, even though the hearth was empty. He wouldn’t have looked out of place in a golden era black and white and Katie wished that she’d be able to speak to him.

‘Is it too much to ask?’

His voice, deep and full-bodied, made Katie jump, her knees instantly turning to water.

‘One minute of solitude.’ The ghost raised his eyes to heaven with great drama.

‘I’m sorry,’ Katie found herself saying. ‘I’ll leave you in peace.’ She turned to get out of the room, but the man was turning around, his face a pure expression of surprise that probably echoed her own.

‘You can hear me?’

Katie nodded. ‘And you can talk. I didn’t realise—’

‘You can see me?’ The man’s face was moving as he spoke, but the transparency of his features was disconcerting; it was giving Katie a headache so she focused on his chest instead.

‘Yes. You’re a bit...thin...but I can see you perfectly well.’

He hesitated, then stepped back to the fireplace, pulled a pipe from his pocket. ‘I don’t suppose you have a light? I’m dying for a smoke.’

‘No,’ Katie said. ‘I could go and get one, though.’

‘Don’t bother.’ He looked sadly at the pipe and then slipped it back into his pocket. ‘It won’t work.’

‘Why?’

He shrugged. ‘Beats me. Maybe it’s part of my punishment.’ He gave her a crooked smile that made other parts of her body go a little bit liquid. ‘I have tobacco but no light. I can see food but I can’t eat it.’

That didn’t sound nice. ‘I thought ghosts didn’t feel hunger.’

He gave another elegant shrug. ‘Force of habit.’

‘I’m Katie,’ Katie said, deciding to take control of the conversation. ‘Have you been here long?’

‘In this house or this room?’

‘The house.’

‘A while. I’m Henry.’ He tilted his head back and seemed to be appraising her; it was hard to tell with the little glimpses Katie was taking of his face. She took a longer look, then had to swallow down a sudden burst of sickness.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘You’re all, wavy. It’s making me feel queasy.’ Katie added, ‘Sorry,’ as she didn’t want to seem rude. It wasn’t his fault, after all.

‘How’s this?’ Henry shimmered for a moment and then, somehow, did seem to be a little more solid, but perhaps she was just getting used to the sensation.

‘So, how long have you been here?’ Henry’s voice really was nice. Deep but soft.

‘Just a couple of hours.’

‘You’re taking it well,’ he said. ‘How’d you die?’

‘What?’

‘I apologise if I sound blunt. I haven’t conversed with anyone for a long while.’

‘I’m not dead,’ Katie said.

Henry frowned. ‘So, how are you able to see me?’

‘I have no idea,’ Katie said, ignoring the itch behind her ear.

‘You’re alive,’ Henry said musingly. ‘Now, that is peculiar. I was beginning to think this was purgatory.’

‘Haven’t you seen people before?’

‘Seen, yes. But not spoken with. I had assumed they were echoes of life or perhaps hallucinations sent to torture me. So close to life but not part of it,’ he said in a dramatic voice. Then, in a more ordinary tone, ‘That kind of thing.’

‘No. This is reality. The real world. Earth.’

He nodded. ‘Okey-doke. That is interesting. And how long have you been able to see people like me? Lost souls.’

‘Ghosts? About a week. I’m still getting used to it.’

‘I’ll bet.’ Henry sounded sympathetic and Katie had to tamp down the sudden urge to tell him all of her fears.

‘How long is it since you—?’

‘Died? I’m not sure. I don’t know what year this is, but I passed in 1948.’

‘Over sixty years. Have you been here all that time?’

‘I don’t believe so. I was in a dark box for a long time.’

Katie shuddered. ‘You were conscious inside your coffin?’

Henry held up a hand. ‘Please don’t use that word. I prefer “storage”.’

‘Fair enough,’ Katie said. She could feel a headache coming on; her temples pulsed in time with Henry’s shimmering form. She was going to have to leave and lie down in a dark room. Just for a week or so. She closed her eyes against the pain. ‘Are you usually here? In this room?’

‘Why?’ Henry said. ‘Would you like to call on me again?’

‘If I may,’ Katie said, keeping her voice as polite as possible. She opened her eyes a crack.

‘I would like that very much,’ Henry said. He began to fade, the flickering getting worse.

‘Wait.’ Katie had a sudden thought. ‘Why do you think you’re being punished?’

Henry smiled his disconcertingly attractive smile and said, ‘Because, Katie, I’m a very bad man.’ And then he disappeared.

Chapter 15

When Katie got home she realised that she had several missed calls from Gwen’s number. She cursed the rubbish mobile reception at The Grange and called her back, excited to think that Gwen had found something useful about controlling her power already.

‘It’s Fred,’ Gwen said, sounding shaky. ‘He’s worse. I don’t know how much longer—’

‘Five minutes,’ Katie said. She didn’t want to waste time changing out of her work clothes, but she swapped her skirt and black tights for a long cotton one and sandals and headed back out into the heat.

Gwen was waiting outside Fred’s cottage, her enormous canvas bag slung over one shoulder. Katie hugged her, her heart hurting for Gwen. Fred was a fixture of Pendleford; it was unthinkable that he might not be there for ever.

‘Are you coming in?’ Gwen put a hand on Katie’s arm. ‘You don’t have to.’

‘No.’ Katie squared her shoulders. ‘I want to see him.’ That wasn’t strictly true. She’d prefer to remember Fred the way he was before he got sick. Ancient and grumpy, but always ready with a cup of disgustingly strong tea.

‘He’ll like that. He might not be able to show it—’

Katie didn’t want to talk any more, could feel her anxiety growing. If they didn’t walk into Fred’s terraced cottage soon, she was going to lose her nerve completely.

Inside, the house smelled of disinfectant and the foot cream Gwen made for him. Fred had become so devoted to it, the smell was linked to him, like another man’s aftershave or the smell that came from Max’s skin. Katie blinked. She didn’t want to think about Max.

The district nurse had made up a bed in the living room, as the bathroom was on the ground floor and Fred hadn’t been able to manage stairs for some weeks. Last time Katie was here, Fred had served them mugs of tea and plates of custard creams and he’d sat in his favourite chair and they’d watched the snooker together. His chair was tucked into the corner, now, facing away from the rest of the room like a naughty child, and Fred was lying flat on his back. He was very still and very straight, his nose pointed to the ceiling. Katie swallowed.