Adri Sinclair's Blog - Posts Tagged "ghost"

Oooh Exciting stuff today! Tom Hodden has been a good friend to me for a time now. He has been supportive of our little hang out here too, and when he saw my call for Author's to come forward - Tom didn't hesitate to put his hand up and offer to help.
So a hearty, friendly welcome Mr. Tom Hodden!

If you'd like to read more of his work, you can find it here - he has quite the selection of reads!

- And you can stalk him here! 

---------------------------- Happy Reading! -----------
Most people would think this was the perfect night to snuggle up to somebody warm and bask in the glow of the television. Or to stay late in the pub and keep the cold away with a few drinks, or more than a few judging by how little those girls have on as they stagger from one bar to the next, saying too loudly the kind of stuff they would regret if they could remember it the next morning. That is a bad omen. For some reason drunks always feel the need to follow me. To heckle. Like they have something to prove.

Like I don't have enough trouble on my round.

Yeah, most people would see this as the perfect night to do anything else. But with the clear night full of stars, and a light frost painting the town silver, I think this is the perfect night for a walk with the ghosts.

I start in the market place. There are three pubs and a Chinese place around the square, and it is the quickest route between a lot of other bars and locals, so it is pro bably best to start here before the bells ring out for last orders. The Guild Hall is raised over the market place on a few pillars of stone, and more of solid oak. It is a venerable old building, painted a pastel shade, and the little bell at the crown polished to a shine though it has not rung in decades.

Few people pass under the hall at night, they skirt around it. Even if it is the most direct route, people veer away from the shadows beneath the hall, and few even know why instinctively add a few extra meters to their walk. The kids who insist on carving their names into surface that can be despoiled show an unusual respect to the pillars with out knowing it.

I step from the red brick of the road to the flagstone of the market place, from the amber street light to the inky shadows and I step towards the heart of the sheltered square. I can instantly feel Wendy watching me, though it takes me a few seconds to blink her into focus. She is stood where the shadows are darkest, dressed in the boots, trousers, shirt and jumper of a farmer, several decades out of touch. Her hair is tied back so it looks short, and a cigarette hangs from her lips. She looks bleached of colour, faded grey and caked in dust. Her skin is pale, her hair is near white, with only a hint of the red and brown that it carried in life. Even tired, weary, and creased in worry her face holds a gentle beauty.

She stares at me, suspicion in her eyes.

“Hello Wendy.” I smile as I greet her. I try to look harmless. “You don't have to wait here.”

She looks at me, but she shows no sign of hearing me.

“He isn't coming. You can walk on.” I try to make it sound like she can walk on home, but she won't have to go that far. A little way from her anchor point and she will fade into the Light. I offer her my hand. “Do you want me to see you home?”

“My husband will be here soon.” She says firmly, but cheerfully. “I have to wait for him. To walk him home.”

I wonder for a moment how hard I should try to get her to move on. Part of her knows that her husband did arrive back in fifty four, and that with a stomach full of bitter and a head full of gossip he figured she had been playing away. He didn't mean to kill her. The punch to the back of her head was just to knock her down, but she cracked her head on the stone. Knocked herself out and never woke up.

Sometimes she remembers. The Police get called when people hear the shrill shrieks of shock and anguish. But she will never leave. She becomes a scream in the night, no body or shadow, just the sound. The next time the moon is full, there she will be, waiting for her husband, clinging to the last few moments before her murder. When her life was full of happy expectation.

“You sure you want to stay?” I ask. I offer my hand again. She has to take it willingly.

She looks at me. “I wont go.” She says with ersatz joy. She steps away from me.

I take my hand back. She is still tied to her spot, and there is nothing I can do to make her. Instead I reach into my pocket and toss her a paper bag. “Here, at least keep a little of the cold out.”

“Kendal Mint Cake?” She takes one of the cubes of mint fondant out the bag and puts it in her mouth. For a second, just a second, she is rose cheeked and flushed with all the colour of life. She looks at me. “My favourite.”

I smile. “See you soon Wendy.”

She is as happy as she will let herself be when I walk on. It is all I can do. I pass the vast brick buildings. I pause as a woman comes out of one of the pubs. She is not drunk. She has not quite joined any of the conversations. She has been hanging around in the crowd, surrounded by people but still all alone. She holds a plastic bag from the off license, four cans of a particular brand of lager. I pause and glance past her to the bar, wondering who she is in a hurry to avoid. A tired looking man, stout, older, ruddy faced from a few too many totes, is staring after her, his eyes full of apologies.

“Lisa.” I say her name as she is about to walk on. She looks back at me, frowning, trying to work out how I know her name.

“Maybe you should leave Mark tonight. Remember him another way.” I try to smile. “And maybe not make yourself feel so alone? Eh?”

“Do I know you?” She demands.

“Not exactly. I...” I breathe in. “But I know of you. And... I know nobody else in the world feels the same loss you do, or can begin to imagine how much pain you have been in, I lost people too. And I don't think... I just don't think the best way to remember him is to wait by the ring road and punish yourself.”

She swears under her breath then tells me it is none of my business. So I walk on. I make a mental note to keep an eye out for her later.

On one side of the road is a brewery that still makes beer. Across the road is another brewery that is now a super market. As I pass a cross roads, I am in a street of terrace town houses. Most are Regency, stone and brick with tall sash windows and decorative flourishes. It is a wide street, with scattered trees and a park that does not fit. It is a green, with a trim lawn and some flower beds. Once there was an abbey here, long ago lost to ruin and consumed by the earth. The terraces cottages that bend around it are much older than the town houses. They are poky and compact, with dense little gardens, that butt right up to the hallowed ground that not even the weeds will encroach.

The Brother whose name is lost even to himself watches me from a corner. As I approach he withdraws, hoping the shadows will claim him. There is little of his spirit left now. A hint of a cowl in the shadows, a suggestion of a firm jaw and eyes that have seen too much of this world. He is little more than an ink stain on the fabric of the world.

I offer him my hand. He stares at me, scowling.

“You are tired Brother.” I warn him. “Every month you grow a little more frayed, a little less present. Why do this to yourself. Why force yourself into oblivion?”

He turns his back on me. Perhaps he does not remember. Or perhaps he remembers too well, and knows what awaits him when he moves on. I can think of nothing in Heaven or Hell that could be worse than waiting to fade slowly.

“Please. Let me ease the burden. Take my hand. Walk a few steps from here and know your peace?” I say.

He folds his arms, resolute that he shall not pass. The blood that covers one of his hands has not faded. The spots and stains upon his fingers are jet black in the moonlight. He stares at them, then hides them in his sleeve, his head bowing.

“There is nothing for me beyond this mortal coil.” He says resigned to his fate. “Leave me.”

My feet drag to my third stop. It is a long walk, right the way back past the market place, up the high street towards the station at the top of the town. To the underpass beneath the railway that links the front of the station to the Mall, the splendid cluster of Victorian houses. They were once solidly middle class, tall but thin, with servants entrances down in the cellar. They are showing their age now, a little saggy around the seams.

The underpass is a simple passage of yellow Faversham bricks, flanked at either end by steep flights of steps. The walls are covered in graffiti and the floor pocked with gum. There are long lights, fixed to the arch of the ceiling, yet the passage still fills like it is filled with shadows and echoes.

I emerge up into the Mall and approach one of the broad oak trees that segregate the through road from the terrace. In the shadows of the oaks is Jack. He is a man who has been distorted by the myths and the legends around him. The whispers of those who never knew there were mortal remains of the bogey man around whom they weave ever more intricate tales of darkness and horror.

There is little of his mortal form left. What lurks among the skeletal shadows of the trees now is a gnarled and corrupted caricature of a man. He is tall and jagged, with a crooked frame, talons for fingers and a top hat that he wears like a crown. His face is ghoulish leather, his mouth filled with yellowing fangs and uneven teeth. His eyes bulge.

I steel myself as I approach and hold out my hand. He stares at it for a moment, then he lunges for me, raging. With one hand he whips a cane at me, with the other a cleaver stained with rust and gore. He snarls and howls and spits.

But he stops at the edge of the shadows. He can feel the ties of his anchor.

I step back. Still holding out my hand.

“If you hate me, come for me.” I say.

He breathes through his nose. Clouds of silver mist sparkle in the night. He backs away. He bares his teeth and he meets my eyes. He waves for me to step closer. I look at his cane and his butchers knife. I do not know what stories the kids tell about him these days, but I do not want to find out first hand.

“Do you even remember being Jack Jones any more?” I ask.

He does not react to the name. It has lost all meaning to him, along with his memories. The myth, the legend, the nightmare has replaced them. There is nothing I can offer him. I am thankful that most people will avoid his territory on instinct. I offer my hand, but he refuses to step any closer. I leave him be before I agitate him to another rage.

The town is old. Few bombs fell here during the war, few fires have raged. The town is a patchwork of buildings of all vintages, of varying styles. It looks like it belongs on the front of a chocolate box because it has so many nooks and crannies that seem almost timeless. Despite all that history, all the fires, the plagues, the murders, accidents, and all the dirty little secrets of the past, there are only ever twelve or thirteen ghosts on my rounds.

Mark is the most recent. He stands on the ring road, near the bridge over the railway. There are still flowers and a photo cable tied to the fence in the grass verge, mourning his passing. He stands at the kerb, staring at the stretch of road where his life was cut short, forever wearing the jacket and jeans he died in. He had been a kid on a motorbike trying to be too clever. He mounted the pavement to undertake a lorry he must have thought was driving too slow. But when he tried to hop back from the pavement to the road he got it wrong. The bike went out from under him and he fell into the road. The lorry braked hard, but Mark was just too close.

That was a little over a year ago. It has not been an easy year for anybody. His family, his friends, the driver of the lorry. Everybody wants somebody to blame, somebody to scream at in righteous fury. To burden with all the guilt, the grief and the loss.

Mark is no different. There are only two people left in his world, and he can't blame himself.

“Mark.” I hold out a hand to him. “I think you know what you have to do.”

“No.” He shoves me away. “I won't go. I... I won't leave them.” He grabs his head in both hands. “I know they come here. I hear them talk when they replenish the flowers. I think maybe I even call out to them.”

“But you aren't sure.” I tell him. “It is growing harder and harder to think straight. Everything else is fading away, but the anger, the pain, the grief, that is all staying raw.”

“I know they can feel me here.” He points a finger at me. “They can hear me when I call. Sense me somehow. Just a presence, but at the same time, more than that...”

“Which is why you have to do this.” I try hard to keep the tone of my voice low. “All the while you are here, they can't let go. They can't move on. All your grief and pain stays here. Wounds won't heal if you won't move on.”

“I am not dying while my family needs me.” He screams. “I am not going anywhere while she still clings to me.”

Oh dear. “She?” I ask. “The cat's mother?” I see his snort. “Oh. Your wife.”

Lisa. His wife. They married in haste, and were repenting at leisure. Young love bound them together forever, before either really knew what the word meant.

“She might have been throwing herself at that four eyed ugly pea-” He starts to rave.

“But not now.” I cut him off. “Oh no. Not while she is suffering from guilt and greed. Not all the while it hurts.” I step closer. “Mark. Ask yourself if that is what you truly want. Is that who fell in love with? Somebody who would rather she were in pain with him, than happy without him?”

“Yes.” He thumps his chest. “That is what the promise meant. Together in sickness and health. For better or worse. Rich or poor. Sick or healthy.”

“Until death did you part.” I say coldly.

“Does it have to?” He whispers. “She comes back this way from the pub. If.. If I...”

“No.” I throw all the power I can behind the word. “Do not do that.”

“But I could.” He looks down the road. The pubs are closed. Lisa has no crowd to hang around with. She is walking slowly, nursing the cans in her plastic bag. He looks past her to the cars and lorries that still rush past at regular intervals. “If she were here I could...” He holds up his hands. “I could ring her bloody neck and choke an apology out of her. Make her wish she never looked twice at that gangly, ugly, horrid...”

I give him a shove. “You can't want that.”

He stares at me. “Why? I can't get caught now.”

And that thought sickens me. That the only thing stopping him from being as terrible a monster as Jack in life was the fear of being caught. It knots my stomach. I look across the road. Lisa has stopped on the far pavement. She is hypnotised by the passing traffic. She pulls out one of the cans and starts her little ritual.

“Hello Mark. ” She whispers to herself. “I hope where ever you are you are feeling better than you were that last night. Happier. I...” She opens the can. “This one is for you mate.” She turns the can over and watches the Australian Amber pour out over the kerb.

“I bloody meant it that night.” Mark hisses. He raises his voice to a shout. “I was going to kill you!” He slams his hands on his chest. “You know that? I was going to find you with him and I was going to kill you.”

She pauses. She stares into the pool of amber light, but sees neither him nor me. She just stares, trying to listen to something over the traffic she can't quite make out. Feeling like her grave has been danced on.

“Do not do this Mark.” I shove him back. “Don't you bloody do this.”

He does not hear me. Not any more.

“Lisa!” He screams. “Lisa!”

I put a hand over his mouth and stifle him. His eyes are wild. Across the road I can see Lisa staring into the shadows, his eyes are wild. Across the road I can see her looking around, trying to pick the word from the echoes of the night. Her mouth spreads into a nervous, terrified smile.

“Mark?” She drops her cans and darts out into the road. She darts out so fast I don't have time to shout a warning or to make her see me. She just steps into the road as the car rushes by. She spins against the side of the car and falls to the floor, her head cracking on the kerb.

I don't hear the squeal of brakes, the Police car that had been coming the other way grinding to a halt. I don't hear the snap of her head on the concrete, or the shocked retching of the young lad who had been behind the wheel.

I just hear the wicked laugh Mark lets out. “Oh yes!” He cries with laughter. “Yes!”

The police, the driver, the woman from another car, are all at the edge of the road fussing a broken body. But Lisa is stood on the pavement, staring at us. Then down at the men and woman trying to bring her body back to life. Her face is a mask of confused pain.

“Yes!” Mark struts forwards three steps, into the road. He stops suddenly, as he feels the end of his tether, as he reaches as far as he can from his anchor point. His smile freezes. “Get here.” He screams at Lisa. “Get here now!” He waves at her. As he starts to swear loudly she just shakes her head and backs away a step. He glances at me. He tries to walk forwards, but he knows another step would bring him to the light. “No.” He gives me an accusing look. “No. No. You can't do this.”

“I didn't.” I snap at him.

“No.” He shakes his head. “Can she reach me? Can she get herself here? Lisa! Come here now!”

I walk past him. None of the crowd around the body see me as I skirt around the edge of the incident. I put a hand on Lisa's shoulder.

“I...” She points at herself. “I didn't mean that to happen.”

“I know.” I try to smile at her. “I'm sorry. You should not stay here. Not to see this.”

“I thought he called out me.” She says, dreamily. “For me to say sorry to him. For him to be sorry to me. For things to be right.” She looks across the road. “Sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. But... I couldn't stay. I couldn't spend another night afraid.” She grips my hand tight. She fights the tears. Her entire body is shaking. “I never wanted this. But I couldn't be his. Not another day longer.”

“Then come with me.” I say gently.

“Where?” She looks at me.

“Not far.” I walk her back down the path a way. Her tether snaps. She dissolves into light and embers, as she fades from this world. I look back at Mark. On his side of the road he is screaming at me to bring her back. He is screaming that he will kill me.

I wave for him to come get me. But he won't move. He won't take another step. I think he knows all too well what it waiting for him beyond his anchor, and he isn't ready to face it. Not yet. I turn my back and ignore the shouts that follow me into the night. I whistle to myself so I don't have to hear the hell he is making for himself.

------------------------------------------------------                          THANK YOU TOM!! ---------------------------------------------