Enter the Dead: A Supernatural Thriller (16 page)

An icy breeze swept
along the street and tore at his face and neck, forcing him back into the
warmth and security of his house. Locking the door behind him, he re-joined
Sarah in the sitting room.

‘Who was that?’ she
asked, switching off the TV. ‘I was about to send out a search party.’

‘Oh, it was only George
from next door,’ Sam replied, the lie tripping easily from his tongue. ‘As
usual, he was sticking his nose in where it’s not wanted. I’ll be the talk of
the street by ten o’clock tomorrow morning.’

‘It gives him something
to do,’ Sarah said. ‘You just wait until you’re his age. You’ll be exactly the
same.’

‘You can shoot me if I
am.’

‘Anyway,’ she said, moving
closer. ‘Where were we?’

Sam felt himself stir
as she pressed against him. It felt like an eternity since they’d last been
intimate with each other. However, his growing desire was immediately dampened
by lurid visions of her and Tom in bed together, grinding against each other
like wild animals, an unbridled look of pure ecstasy on Sarah’s face as she moaned
every time he thrust himself into her. Unable to shake off the vision, Sam pushed
her away and stood up.

‘Sam, wait!’ cried
Sarah, but it was no use. Ignoring her plea, he hurried out of the room and stomped
upstairs.

‘Closure?’ he mumbled, entering
the bathroom and locking the door behind him. ‘I’m not even close.’

Sam
awoke the following morning to find himself alone in the house. He checked the
clock on the bedroom wall: 9.15am.
I must have been more tired than I
realised
, he thought, climbing out of bed and trudging downstairs. There was
a note on the kitchen table.

Left
for work – didn’t want to wake you. Max at school. Sorry about last night - I
should have realised it would take time. I’m such an idiot! Let’s talk about it
tonight, okay? I love you. I mean it. X

Sam read the note twice
and grimaced as he recalled his behaviour the previous evening. Of course it
would take time, but running for cover wouldn’t help.
I’ll try again tonight
,
he thought, filling the kettle. He felt so much better for having enjoyed a
good night’s sleep; his head was clear and for the first time in days he felt
somewhere approaching normal. He smiled as he pictured Tom Jackson going cap in
hand to Charles Holdsworth, pleading for his job.
What goes around comes
around
, he thought.
That bastard deserves everything he gets
.

And then he cursed as
he remembered that he was due to meet with Gracie in less than two hours’ time.
With the benefit of a good night’s sleep, he was now certain that whatever he
thought
he’d seen and heard were no more than stress-induced hallucinations. Admittedly,
had he been asked yesterday whether or not he considered them real, he would
have wavered in his reply, but this morning, in the cold light of day, it was a
different story. He wasn’t prepared to listen to the misguided ramblings of an
old woman. He made a mental to note to phone her after breakfast and politely
tell her that he didn’t need her help.

As he sipped on the
first coffee of the day, he considered the odds of his marriage surviving.
Maybe the affair had happened for a reason; maybe their relationship would one day
be stronger for the severe blow it’d taken. Perhaps there was some truth in the
old adage that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Either way, sitting at
his kitchen table on that bright, winter morning, the sunshine streaming
through the window, Sam was becoming increasingly positive about the prospects
of what lay ahead.

And then the phone
rang.

‘Hello?’ he said,
guessing it was probably Sarah calling to check up on him.

‘Good morning, Mr
Railton.’

Sam almost dropped the
phone when he heard the strong, Yorkshire accent.

‘Sergeant Calloway? Is
that you?’

‘I see there’s nothing
wrong with your memory,’ Calloway replied. ‘How’s the rest of you holding up? Feeling
any better?’

‘Erm…yes…a little.
What…why are you calling me? Not that I mind – it’s great to hear from you –
it’s just that…well…I wasn’t expecting to hear from you so soon. Is everything
alright?’

A prolonged pause told
him it wasn’t.

‘I’m sorry to have to
call you so soon after getting home, Mr Railton,’ Calloway said, ‘but I’m
afraid I have some bad news. It concerns your attacker, Stephen Gilchrist.’

Sam felt the hairs on
the back of his neck rise. ‘What news?’

‘As you know, Mr
Gilchrist was taken to hospital yesterday following the incident at the station.
It appears he suffered some kind of seizure, although he had no history of
epilepsy or any associated medical conditions.’

‘
Had
?’ Sam
asked, his mouth suddenly as dry as dust. ‘You said he
had
no history of
epilepsy.’

Calloway coughed loudly
into the phone before continuing. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘I can’t seem to shake off
this blasted cold. As I was saying, he had a seizure. He soon came round and
not long after was fine, but as this was the first time that anything like this
had happened to him, the medical team thought it best that he remain in their
care overnight so they could keep an eye on him.’

‘So he’s okay?’

‘Not exactly.’ Several
seconds of silence ensued as Calloway collected his thoughts. ‘I’m afraid
there’s no other way of telling you this, Mr Railton. Believe me, I wouldn’t be
calling you if it wasn’t absolutely necessary, but as there’s an open case
against Mr Gilchrist, I’m obliged by law to inform everyone who is directly
involved that Mr Gilchrist…Stephen…is dead.’

Sam slumped onto one of
the chairs around the kitchen table. ‘Dead? But that’s impossible. He can’t be.
You said yourself he recovered from the seizure. He was in hospital for
Christ’s sake. How can a healthy boy die in hospital?’

‘It was suicide,’ Calloway
replied. ‘It happened around five o’clock this morning. According to one of the
duty nurses, Mr Gilchrist spent the night complaining about excruciating
headaches. They gave him pills, but according to him they didn’t work. The
nurse visited him several times through the night to try and calm him down, but
the last time she came – about four a.m. – he wasn’t in his bed. She assumed
he’d gone to use the toilet, but when he didn’t return, she called security.’

‘How did he die?’ Sam asked,
surprised at how easily the question came out.

‘It would appear that
Mr Gilchrist gained access from the hospital to the multi-storey car park and
threw himself from the ninth floor. Needless to say, he died instantly.’

‘Oh no…’ A gruesome
image of Stephen Gilchrist landing head-first onto the pavement with a
sickening thud lodged itself in Sam’s mind.

‘Mr Railton? Mr
Railton, are you alright?’

‘He was only fifteen
years old,’ Sam said, barely able to hold on to the phone. ‘He was just a boy.
If I hadn’t been on that train, none of this would have happened. He would
still be alive. He wo-’

‘That’s not true,’
Calloway said, cutting him off. ‘If it hadn’t been you, it would have been
someone else. That young man was looking for trouble.’

‘I don’t understand,’
Sam said. ‘Why would he commit suicide? He was as high as a kite when he
attacked me, but surely the drugs and booze would have been out of his system by
yesterday. He would have been stone cold sober. I can see why he might have
felt guilty, remorseful even, but suicide? It doesn’t add up.’

‘Forgive me, Mr
Railton, but figuring out why he did it is our job. A full investigation will
be launched, and at some stage you may be required to assist us, but-’

‘You must have an idea!
He wasn’t a bad kid. You said yourself that he has…had…a clean record and came
from a good home.’

‘I don’t like to
speculate,’ Calloway said, ‘but perhaps that’s part of the problem.’

‘Huh?’

‘The fact that he
appears to have been just an ordinary kid who made a stupid mistake. Maybe the
guilt got the better of him, or maybe he was scared stiff about how his parents
might react. Not to mention what effect it would have on his future prospects.
He was a bright student by all accounts; a charge of Common Assault doesn’t
look great on a university application form. Maybe it all got too much for him
and he wanted a way out. Either way, you have nothing to feel bad about. You
were the victim of a violent assault; nothing more, nothing less. Is that
clear?’

‘Yes,’ Sam replied. His
tone couldn’t have been any less convincing. ‘Thanks for calling, Sergeant
Calloway. I hope everything goes well with the investigation. Goodbye.’ Without
waiting for a reply, he hung up and placed the phone on the table.

Ten seconds later,
there was a knock at the door. At first, he chose to ignore it, but whoever it
was had no intention of going away; the knocking grew louder and more
persistent, until eventually Sam had no other choice than to haul himself up
from his chair and make his way along the hallway to answer it.

The last person he
expected to see standing on his front step was Gracie. She smiled at him,
ignoring the stunned look on his face.

‘Gracie? What are you
doing here? I’m sorry, but I’m a little busy at the mome-’

‘I know this isn’t a
good time for you, Sam, but I’m afraid it can’t wait any longer.’

‘What can’t wait?’

‘We need to talk about
your father.’

Sam looked at her
aghast. ‘My father’s dead,’ he said. ‘He died nearly thirty years ago.’

‘I know,’ Gracie said,
her smile fading. ‘And now he’s back.’

‘This
is ridiculous,’ Sam said, too stunned to protest as Gracie brushed past him in
the doorway. ‘You can’t just come around here saying things like that. You’re
mad, you know that?’

‘If you honestly
thought I was mad, you wouldn’t let me look after Max,’ she replied,
disappearing into the kitchen. ‘Now, why don’t you be a gentleman and make this
old lady a nice cup of tea, eh? We need to talk.’

Sam opened his mouth
but was lost for words. The morning had started so well – the sun was shining,
his head was clear and he’d slept like a baby – but it was rapidly descending
into a surreal, parallel universe. Not only had Stephen Gilchrist decided for
some inexplicable reason to hurl himself from a concrete tower block, but the
woman who’d looked after Max for over ten years had kindly chosen to inform him
that his dad was back from the dead. What next? Maybe Sarah would suddenly
appear and attempt to convince him that a threesome with her and Tom would be
the perfect tonic for getting their marriage back on track. The way the morning
was heading, anything was possible.

All the same, he
couldn’t deny his curiosity. And to be fair to Gracie, in spite of her weird
and wonderful extra-curricular activities, she had always come across as
level-headed and sensible. She certainly wasn’t prone to sudden outbursts such
as this; if that had been the case, then both he and Sarah would never have
entrusted Max into her care in the first place. But what on earth did she mean?
His father? Back from the dead? It was impossible.

‘This better be good,’
he muttered, closing the front door and joining her in the kitchen.

Two
minutes later they were seated at opposite sides of the kitchen table, a
freshly-brewed pot of tea and a plate of biscuits separating them.

‘Thank you,’ Gracie
said, accepting a cup from Sam.

‘I would say you’re
welcome,’ Sam replied, ‘but given the circumstances, I’m not entirely sure I’d
be telling the truth.’

‘Look, Sam,’ she said, declining
the offer of a biscuit. ‘How long have we known each other?’

‘I don’t know. Ten or
eleven years?’

‘Exactly. And in all
that time, have I ever spoken to you about anything else apart from Max?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, have you ever
heard me talk about what I do when I’m not looking after your son.’

‘The psychic stuff?’

Gracie nodded.

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘I
know
so. I’ve
always kept that side of my life separate from my child-caring
responsibilities. Apart from anything else, I prefer to keep it that way; the
two areas don’t mix, and nor should they.’

Sam sighed. ‘Look,
Gracie…I’ve just been given some distressing news that I wasn’t expecting. I
know you mean well, but can we please do this another time?’

‘I’m sorry, Sam,’ she
replied, shaking her head, ‘but I’m afraid
time
is something we don’t
have. Believe me, I wouldn’t be here if we did.’

‘I don’t understand!
What on earth is all this about? I’m sorry, but if you don’t tell me what’s
going on I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’

‘Fine. I’ll come
straight to the point. For about a week now, there has been someone coming to
see me.’

‘One of your so-called
spirits?’

‘Yes, only this
particular spirit is not like the others. At first, he refused to show his
face, and then-’

‘How do you know it’s a
he
? If it refused to show its face, I mean.’

‘By the way he dresses,
and his build. I know times have changed since I was a young woman, but even
now you don’t come across many six foot ladies wearing men’s suits and hats.’

‘What kind of suit?’
Sam asked, his skin becoming cold as he made the connection.

Gracie looked at him
and nodded. ‘You’ve seen him too, haven’t you?’

Sam ignored the
question. ‘What kind of suit?’

‘A grey suit. Quite
baggy, like the young men used to wear back in the sixties and seventies.
Believe it or not, I can still remember those days. Men used to dress so
smartly back then. But the suit he was wearing was worn and tattered, as if
whoever was wearing it had been dragged backwards through a hedgerow.’

Sam felt the blood
drain from his face. ‘And the hat?’

‘Why don’t you tell
me?’

He closed his eyes. ‘The
hat was brown,’ he said, ‘and old fashioned. The kind of hat you’d see Humphrey
Bogart or Cary Grant wearing back in the day. Not like a bowler hat. More of a-‘

‘It’s called a fedora,’
Gracie said. ‘Very popular at the time, although I would never have put grey
with brown. A strange choice.’

‘I’ve seen him. Not his
face, but the rest of him. He was exactly as you describe.’

‘I thought as much.
That’s why I came. Anyway, as I was saying, to begin with I couldn’t make out
who he was, and he wasn’t much of a talker, so I had no idea why he was there.
However, one thing I did notice was that he often appeared whenever Max was in
the room. Initially I thought it was merely a coincidence, but not anymore. I
think he has something to do with your son.’

‘Max?’

‘Yes. I haven’t said
anything to Max, of course; I wouldn’t dream of it. But I’m convinced it’s not
a coincidence. Spirits of the dead never appear without good reason.’

‘But why say he’s my
father? How do you even know about him?’

‘I remember once asking
Max about his grandparents; he mentioned that his grandfather – your father –
had died when you were only a young boy.’

‘Not exactly hard
evidence, Gracie.’

‘No, but when you and
Sarah came to collect Max yesterday, you told me you wanted to talk to me. The
way you said it…I had a hunch something was wrong. Why else would you want to
see me in private?’

‘This is ridiculous,’
Sam said, standing up and walking to the sink. ‘Do you realise how insane this
is?’

‘Sit down, Sam.
Please.’

He turned around and
looked at her. ‘Why? So you can fill my head with more of your voodoo
bullshit?’

If Gracie was offended,
she didn’t show it. ‘I don’t blame you for feeling angry and confused. It’s
hardly surprising.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just…it’s just that this is beginning to
freak me out. I can’t even remember what my father looked like, let alone how
he dressed. It was all such a long time ago. After…after what happened, my
mother destroyed every photo we had of him.’

‘After
what
happened, Sam?’

Sam’s head dropped. ‘I
don’t want to talk about it. It’s been so long since I told anyone. Apart from
a handful of therapists, Sarah is the only
normal
person I’ve ever told,
and even she didn’t get the whole story.’

‘I think you’ll find
I’m a good listener,’ Gracie said. ‘And whoever this spirit is, I honestly
believe we should talk about him. Trust me. I only want to help you.’

Sam looked up from his
cup and their eyes met. Her face was kind and open, there was no hidden agenda
behind her smile. Even if he didn’t believe in what she did, he could
appreciate why people came from far and wide to seek her advice. She had a
comforting aura about her, a reassuring presence that suggested things weren’t
really as bad as they seemed.

What harm would it do
in talking to her
? he thought.
If there really is
something going on, surely it would be beneficial to have somebody on your side
that supposedly knows what they’re doing…whatever that means.

He removed the tea-cosy
from the pot and refilled their cups before sitting back in the chair and
beginning his story.

‘When I was a little
boy, I lived with my parents and younger sister, Lucy, in an old terraced house
in Cranston, a small industrial town in northeast England. My mother still
lives in Cranston, although not in the same house. As with many men in the
town, dad worked in a nearby coal mine. He was a pitman, living his life by the
sirens that rang out through the town calling the men to work in the morning.
Mother raised us and looked after the house, earning a little extra cash by
helping out with some of the elderly residents down at the local nursing home.
Laundry, ironing…that type of thing. Sometimes dad would be fine with us all –
there were even times when he had us in stitches with his ridiculous jokes and far-fetched
stories – but most of the time he was a heartless, selfish bastard who treated
us like we were shit on the sole of his shoe. He was a bad man, Gracie. Rotten
to the core. To begin with I thought it was the drink that made him so mean,
but years later I came to realise that alcohol was only part of it. He was one
of those people who thought the whole world was against him, and he would grasp
any opportunity to lash out with both hands. His shift down the mine would
finish at three in the afternoon, but he wouldn’t be home until at least eight.
Instead, he’d head straight down to the pub with some of the other men and piss
away most of his wages on beer and whisky. And he wouldn’t consider his
afternoon to be a success unless he’d had an argument or punch-up with someone
or other.

‘Anyway, as I said,
he’d roll in around eight every evening, demanding his dinner on the table.
Whenever we could, Lucy and I would make ourselves scarce upstairs, desperate
to stay out of his way. More often than not we would sit at the top of the
stairs and listen in as he screamed at our mother for some minor thing not
being right with his dinner, or for how she hadn’t put sufficient milk in his
tea. She never said anything, and she certainly never talked back at him. She
knew that as soon as he finished eating he would collapse into his chair by the
fire and pass out, so her best chance of avoiding a beating would be to try and
keep the peace. Now and then he would flare up and strike her, or push her up
against the wall, but most of the time he was too drunk to see straight, let
alone stand up.’

‘Did your mother ever
consider leaving him?’ Gracie asked.

‘If she did, she never
told me,’ Sam replied. ‘She was a proud woman, and a staunch Christian. I guess
she had the mind-set of
for better or for worse,
although at the time it
couldn’t really get any worse.’

‘Did he beat you and
Lucy too?’

‘More times than I can
remember. He went along with those two misguided Victorian parental guidelines
that children should be seen and not heard, and that if you spare the rod, you
spoil the child. He certainly didn’t spare the rod.’

‘So what happened?’

Sam took a deep breath.
‘It all came to a head one night. November 19
^th
, 1984. I was eight
and Lucy was six. I remember the date because it’s carved into my sister’s
headstone in the graveyard of Saint Cuthbert’s Church.’

Gracie opened her mouth
to say something but Sam cut her off. ‘I woke up in the night…I think I’d had a
nightmare. At the time, I shared a room with Lucy; she slept on the top bunk and
I was on the bottom. Usually, if either of us was scared about anything, we
would wake the other one up and talk about it. But that night, when I went to
wake her up I realised that she wasn’t in bed. To make matters worse, the door
was open. One thing you never do if you have an abusive father is sleep with
the bedroom door open. You keep the door closed and pray that he doesn’t come
knocking.

‘The next thing I knew,
all hell broke loose in the hallway. Shouting, screaming, running…it was chaos.
At first I stayed put – I was too terrified to move – but eventually I couldn’t
help myself. Especially when I heard my mother scream.’

‘What happened?’ Gracie
asked.

‘I ran into the hallway
to find my mother on her hands and knees at the top of the stairs. Only to
begin with I wasn’t completely sure it
was
my mother. She was wild, more
animal than human. I’d never seen her like that before. I walked slowly towards
her, and I could tell from where she was looking that something had happened
downstairs. When I reached her, I turned to see what she was looking at…’ Sam
felt himself choking up; it had been a long time since he’d talked about this out
loud. He sensed that Gracie wouldn’t mind if he cried – no doubt she had seen
it a thousand times before with her clients – but he didn’t want her to see him
that way. Instead, he took some deep breaths before continuing.

‘Dad was lying on one
of the steps about half way down the stairs; a stream of blood ran from his forehead
down his face and onto the carpet. He’d obviously taken a tumble. Pretty bad,
but I couldn’t understand why my mother was reacting so strangely. It wasn’t as
if he’d never fallen over when drunk before, and apart from a cut to the head
he seemed okay. It was only when he hauled himself to his feet that I
understood why she was screaming. It was then that I saw Lucy. She was lying in
a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs, and she wasn’t moving.’

No amount of controlled
breathing could hold back the tears now. He began to cry; gentle sobbing at
first, until eventually the pain grew too much for him and he broke down,
burying his face in his hands as he tried to block out the memory of that
night. No matter how hard he tried to think of something else –
anything
else - he couldn’t stop himself from picturing his sister lying at the foot of
the stairs. One of her legs had been bent double under her tiny body, her white
nightie with a frilled hem pulled up far enough so he could see the bruising
down her thighs. The only saving grace was that he couldn’t make out her face;
her long hair having mercifully covered her features. Lying beside her was
Tessy
,
the scruffy teddy bear that she’d carried around with her since birth. Her best
friend in the whole world, right by her side as always.