Walking With Ghosts (A short story) (2 page)

And when Emily started school, Josie found herself with a little more time, a new partner, and the chance to pay it forward
and
pay it back. So she enrolled with the police force.

And
that’s
why she stood here, now, in this fog-bound alley with the stark moon above and the harsh, slippery cobbles below. She could hear Joe stamping along to her left as if trying to warn something to take cover.

Her feet carried her safely forward. That was the first shock. The second was that nothing jumped out at her. The shop windows reflected blackness as deep as the darkness in Charon’s soul. Something glimmered in the shop, and when she cupped her hands to peer inside she thought she saw something move. A slither of silver.

But it was only a water fountain, left running by the careless staff.

Further round now, about half way, and the darkness swallowed her whole. She could no longer hear Joe’s dependable step, not any living noise at all. She might as well have been in Freddie’s dreamless nightmare-land, awaiting the
click clack
of those terrible finger-blades.

Christ, Josie, stop that!

She tapped her telescopic baton for reassurance and adjusted her stab vest. She thought she heard Joe talking to someone, just a sibilant whisper but definitely his tones, and strained her ears to listen.

And it was right then that something shot out of the darkness. It could have been a cat. It could have been an owl slipping by on whispery wings. But when Josie turned her heart already knew what she was about to face.

The apparition loomed out of the black towards her, a tattered grey face with a mouth stuck open in a wide, silent scream. Empty eye-sockets that led to a lonely death, as unspeakable as anyone could imagine. Wild, ragged hair that hung in shreds at the front and exploded messily around the skull.

Josie staggered backwards, all thoughts of Emily or Joe forgotten. Her mouth opened in its own scream and her legs gave way like frail twigs under the weight of falling blocks. She fell onto her rear, scrabbling her fingers around the slimy cobbles for purchase, but the spectre didn’t come any closer.

Josie saw the wraithlike face begin to crease. The mouth worked without sound.

Oh, my God, Josie thought. It’s trying to say something!

There came a moment, suspended in time, where Josie felt she might go insane, where a mountain of murk and shadow rose behind her eyes and threatened to fill her brain and leave her a frenzied, gibbering wreck. The phantom looked almost sad; it made no further threat towards her.

And then she heard Joe’s own scream of terror, a scream cut off so suddenly he might have had his head torn off.

****

Josie leapt to her feet and felt a fleeting pride as she gained strength born of love for Joe. She turned her back on the ghost, fighting the mental strain, and raced back around the corner of the shop to follow Joe’s route. Twenty seconds later she fell to her knees and skidded the last few feet to his side.

The old officer was lying on his back, still breathing; his eyes were wide and staring at the cold, cold sky.

Josie felt a moments relief. “Oh! You trip and fall over your own. . .”

Then she saw the trembling right arm, the drool slipping down her friend’s chin and a heavy hammer-blow struck her to the core.

She fumbled for the radio. “Hurry, oh
hurry,
” she screamed at the receiver. “Joe Morris is having a heart-attack!”

At that moment there was a hideous scream right behind her, something that made her own heart jolt like it had been juiced by a thousand volts of sizzling electricity, but when she turned around she saw nothing.

The radio fell from her nerveless fingers, smashing to the floor.

PART 2

Back at the station, Josie sat with her head in her hands, staggered as her superior, Paul Kett, spoke eight words that struck her core like black bolt-lightning, as black as night, as black as death.

“Joe died on the way to the hospital,” Paul Kett’s hard exterior melted as he saw her grief. “I’m sorry, Leigh.
Josie,
I’m so sorry.”

She stared into space, unaware of the tears coursing down her face. Words turned to ash in her throat.

“We all feel it,” Kett said, again letting his guard down. “Believe me.”

“I do,” she managed. “Oh, God!”

“What the Hell
happened?
” Kett was pushing her, she knew, to make her talk, to help compartmentalise the grief.

She met his eyes for the first time. Paul Kett was a tall, economical man, with a full mouth and a way of talking that was both respectful and blunt. He was down-to-earth, tough on the outside but, as Joe Morris had told her, a totally different man when he invited you to his home- you saw him then as the man he was- a loving father with a dry wit.

“She screamed,” Josie said. “As if all the demons of Hell were chasing her. She screamed.”

“Who? Who screamed?”

Josie stared at the wall clock. It was ticking softly, measuring out the last seconds of her career if she told the truth. “I don’t know.”

Kett sent a glance towards the clock. “It’s seven A.M., Leigh. You’ve forgotten what happened in two hours?”

She’d never forget what happened. The words threatened to rush out of her, but she compressed her mouth into a harsh, thin line, stopping the flow.

“I don’t have time for this.” Kett stood and came round his desk. “We’ve too many man hours invested in finding this grave-digging child abductor to waste any more time. How the hell could anyone bury a child, for God’s sake? So, tell me, you were near Little Stonegate, right?” He paused. “See a ghost?”

Josie’s eyes betrayed her before her mouth even had chance. Kett shook his head. “We’re cops, Leigh, we’re practical, honest, hard-working cops. Anyone who’s ever walked a late beat in York has a story. We’ve all seen something we’d rather forget. It was one of the kids, right?”

“Scared me ball-less, Sir. I was on my arse, babbling, whilst Joe was dying.”

“No. I don’t believe that, and if you look deep down, neither do you.”

“I guess not. I tried to help him.”

“You
did
help. You made sure the last thing he saw in this world was someone who really cares about him. We should all be so lucky.”

“Joe said that girl’s scream signifies that something terrible is about to happen.”

“I heard her once. My father died the same night.”

Josie closed her eyes and tried a quiet laugh that came out as a strangled sob. “So, I guess I’m the lucky one, hearing her twice.”

Kett suddenly pushed himself forward. “Wait.
Twice?
”

“Yes, Sir. The second time right after I though Joe had died, for the first time.”

“Christ, Leigh. If you’re right, that means this ain’t done yet. Something else is going to happen today...”

****

Josie surfaced from Kett’s stifling office near nine in the morning. Christ, her shift was technically only half way through, and it had already changed her life. Technically, because Kett had just ordered her to take a few days off, to come back fresh after Joe’s funeral.

It was the right thing, and something she needed to do.

The squad room was running as competently as ever, but with a subdued air. There were no good-humoured cracks, no harmless, bawdy comments. Dust motes spun listlessly through heavy air drained of brightness and laughter, and now coloured dull grey instead of red and gold.

Colleagues caught her eye, a few nodded. She made her way to her desk and sat down heavily.

Sunday morning, nine-o-clock. The one person who could lift her spirits would still be in bed, dreaming a bunch of lovely, untainted dreams. No matter. Josie needed her anchor, her innocent muse. She tapped speed-dial one and waited with her head down.

“Mum?” The voice was stifled with sleep.

“Hi, darling.” Josie could barely speak.

There was a rustle of covers and pyjamas and toys and, most likely, a torch.
“Mum?”

Emily’s youthful concern shook Josie into lucidity. “Just thought I’d let you know, Em, I’ll be home early today. Soon.”

Her six-year-old practically squealed, in the way of children going from lethargy to fully alert at the speed of sound.
“Now?”

“Soon, darling, soon. Tell Simon to make blueberry waffles for ten.” She needed them.

More squeals and a sudden hang up, and Josie found her lips had curled up into a smile. She placed the phone gently back into its cradle, lost in thoughts of Emily and Joe and the unpredictability of life when a large shadow fell across her desk.

“Leigh.”

It was Paul Kett and he was drip-white, as if he’d spent the last night walking with ghosts.

Josie felt a dreadful sense of foreboding. . .

. . .and remembered Joe’s words: she only screams when something terrible is going to happen . .

. . . as Kett spoke words no sane person should ever have to hear.

“A six-year-old girl was just abducted from Coney Street. It’s
him
, Leigh. He just took another kid from under our Goddamn noses.”

PART 3

The girl’s name was Kayleigh Bryant. She was six. Emily’s age. Before she realised what she was doing, Josie was already dipping a toe into those dreadful waters, wondering, suffocating, delving deeper and deeper, until she no longer had to wonder, and deliberately dragged herself back to reality before fear for her safe Emily debilitated her.

“I’m staying,” she said to Kett’s back. “I can’t go home.”

“You’re no good now, Leigh.”

“I will be, Sir. My. . .my daughter’s six.” She met his eyes as he spun around. “I
can
do this. I want to.”

“Fine. Listen!” His calm, raised voice quieted the station. “CID will be here soon. This little girl
must
be found. That’s all.”

Josie felt a bloom of respect. With that economical sentence Paul Kett had just delivered a blunt order, in disguise, to everyone to bypass their rivalries and get their jobs done fast. He’d reminded them of the stakes and delivered it all with a modicum of respect.

He gave her one more moment. “Joe will have to wait a while, Leigh. I’m sure he’ll understand.”

****

The centre of York on a Sunday afternoon bore no relation to the York where Joe Morris met his snarling death. Tourists and locals thronged the streets in a mismatched muddle of the purposeful and the pointless. Josie fought her way through the masses to get to the latest crime scene, this one on Low Petergate, just past a French Cafe. She was a spare on this, and thus forced to go it alone. Her quick calls to Emily and Simon were the polar opposites- to the first all apologetic and angry, to the second all fury and understated desperation.

Cops were everywhere. Josie knew about a third of them, the rest regarded her appearance with everything from mild disinterest to outright suspicion. She quickly got among them, deciding the best foot forward was the one that joined the fray.

She found herself on the edge of a group of policeman, and at their centre stood the distraught parents.

Josie came to a thundering stop, a tangle of emotions suddenly confusing her feet. The mother was hysterical, hanging on both to her husband and a big policeman. A WPC was trying to coax her away from the scene and, most likely, to a waiting ambulance. The father was just standing there, shell-shocked, as if all the worlds and dreams he’d ever built has come smashing down around him.

The expression on both their faces broke Josie’s heart. It screamed the single word:
please!
The fear they
radiated
was a manifestation of the unspoken fear every parent in every corner of the world would always secretly harbour.

Please find our daughter. . .please bring her back to us.

Little Kayleigh Bryant, their daughter, was a black-haired six-year-old with a scrunched up nose and a happy-go-lucky nature. She’d been hiding from her dad in a clothes’ shop when the man had grabbed her. She’d been wearing a royal-blue dress with frills and pictures of Princesses on the front and had been carrying her little red blanket, the comforter that never left her side.

Josie had to look away from the distraught parents. She found herself face to face with another new recruit, Stuart Anders, a tall gangly youth with a face like a horse, and teeth to match. “Jesus, Josie,” he said under his breath, “there’s a hundred cops here, it seems, with nothing to do.”

“What happened? Do we even know which way he took her?”