Enter the Dead: A Supernatural Thriller (2 page)

He
suspected there was something wrong as soon as he saw the young blonde waiting
for him in his cubicle. He vaguely recognised her face but couldn’t pin a name
to it. She couldn’t have been at the firm long as usually he was good with
names, but she was certainly stunning to look at: short, cropped hair and the
cutest button nose he’d ever seen. Slim but curvy, sexy but stylish. Hard to
guess her age: early to mid-twenties but no older.

Fresh out of college
,
Sam guessed.

‘Mr Railton?’

‘Yes. Call me Sam. Do I
know you?’

‘No, we haven’t met.
I’m Gabrielle Williams,’ she said, standing up and holding out her hand. ‘Most
people call me Gabby.’

He reciprocated the
gesture, enjoying the feel of her soft skin. ‘Nice to meet you. I don’t mean to
be rude, but have I missed something here? We don’t have anything in the diary,
do we?’

‘In the diary?’

‘A meeting, I mean.’

‘Oh, I see. No, I don’t
think so.’

‘In that case…as nice
as it is to meet you, Gabby, would you mind telling me why you’re here?’

‘Tom sent me. Wait…he
told me that he’d spoken to you?’

‘Not to my knowledge.
What about?’

‘About me helping you
to write the Pilko website. As part of my training.’

‘Training? What
training? I’m sorry but you’ve lost me. What’s all this about? Who
are
you?’

Gabby’s cheeked flushed
as she sensed Sam’s irritation. ‘I’m the new intern,’ she explained. ‘I’ve only
been here a few days; I’ve recently completed my marketing degree at Bristol
Uni and am here to gain some experience. Tom took me on.’

I bet he did, the dirty
pervert
.
That explains your looks. I bet the interview
process was interesting - (okay, Miss Williams, how can you convince me that
you’re worth taking on? There’s an awful lot of…stiff…competition around) -

‘Sam?’

‘Huh?’

‘I was saying that Tom
took me on. Anyway, it’s been fairly quiet around here, so rather than sitting
around making cups of coffee and twiddling my thumbs, Tom thought I might be able
to help you. He said that you’re busy with the Pilko website and that maybe you
could use some help.’

‘Thanks, but I really don’t
need any help. I prefer to work alone.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Once again
she reddened with embarrassment. Her smile, which earlier had brimmed with
youthful exuberance and a willingness-to-please, straightened out as her gaze
dropped to the floor.

‘Look,’ Sam said,
feeling guilty for his bluntness. ‘It’s nothing personal, nothing to do with
you. It’s my fault. I’m just not very good at working with people. Writers
rarely are.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, I’m the one who
should be apologising. I should be thanking you for offering to help. You took
me by surprise, that’s all. Bloody Tom: for the sales director of a design
agency he’s pretty crap at communication! No wonder things are quiet around
here.’

‘Do you want me to talk
to him?’

‘No, it’s fine. Of
course I’m happy to help out. I’m assuming you can write?’

‘Yep.’ The smile had returned,
the full, pert lips parting to reveal gleaming teeth that by comparison made
Sam feel like a dirty, homeless tramp with halitosis. He wasn’t the unfaithful
type, never had been, but any normal red-blooded male would have felt the same
way about a girl like Gabby. And she was supposed to help him get his work done
quicker? Fat chance of that. Still, there were worse distractions.

‘Okay,’ he said,
handing her an old Pilko brochure. ‘The website’s going to include a section on
the history of Pilko. The firm’s owners are a bunch of old farts who actually
think people give a damn about stuff like that. But seeing as they’re paying
our wages, who are we to argue? Why don’t you see how you get on with that; if
you do a decent job we’ll look at what else you can do. Keep the sentences crisp
and clear, okay? We don’t want ‘War and Peace’, just the facts. Put yourself
into the mind of the customer; picture how you would like the information to
read.’

‘Got it. How about:
The
history of Pilko - what came first, the pig or the pie?
’

‘Creative – yes,
appropriate – no. Simple and serious, okay?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Good. Let’s meet up
later and discuss how you’re getting on. Don’t be afraid to ask me for help,
but trust your gut feeling and run with it. I can always rewrite it later.’

I guarantee I’ll
rewrite it later, but give the girl a chance.

‘Okay, thanks Mr Rai…I
mean Sam.’

He watched as she gave
him a sexy smile and walked away, clutching the tattered brochure in her hands.

‘Get thee behind me,
Satan,’ he muttered to himself, sitting down and switching on his computer. He
smiled, thinking how weak-willed even happily married men could be when shown a
little leg. And while he had no intention of embarrassing himself by making an
awkward move on a beautiful girl almost half his age, he was quite content to
spend a few moments imagining the possibilities.

What harm could there
be in that?

Sarah
Railton lay in bed, contemplating how long she could remain there. The mattress
was so soft, the duvet so thick and warm; if she hadn’t needed to get back to
work she could quite happily have stayed there all day. Of course that wasn’t
possible, but surely a few more minutes wouldn’t hurt. After all, she
had
just partaken in a scrumptious session of delicious lunchtime sex. Perfectly
understandable that she might be suffering from a dose of post-coital lethargy.
She smiled as she listened to the sound of her lover singing in the en-suite
shower, evidently proud of his efforts.

And so he should be
,
she thought, reaching for the box of tissues on the bedside table.

She ran her hands
through her hair as she heard the shower door slide open, trying to make
herself as presentable as possible for the man who’d spent twenty exquisite
minutes inside her. She attempted a seductive smile as he emerged from the
bathroom, one hand holding a white towel wrapped around his waist and the other
carrying a bottle of cologne. Even though she’d known him for so long, he was
still as sexy as hell. He knew it, of course, but for Sarah that was part of
the attraction. Sam had always lacked confidence, whereas Tom Jackson, well,
let’s just say he knew how to handle himself.

‘Still in bed?’ he
said, letting his towel drop to the floor so he could apply some cologne. Her
eyes automatically zoned in on his long, plump cock and she wished he would get
back into bed with her. She knew he wouldn’t. He never did.

One strike and you’re
out
,
she thought, recalling the previous twenty minutes.
But what a strike!

‘I can’t get up,’ she
said. ‘You’ve worn me out. I’m going to have to stay here all day.’

‘I wish I could join
you,’ he lied, smiling at her like the cat that ate the cream. ‘But if I don’t
get back to the office in the next half hour they’ll have my balls on a
platter.’

‘Well I for one
wouldn’t be happy about that,’ she said, reaching out from beneath the sheets
to grope his manhood.

‘Hey!’ he said, jumping
back to evade her advances. ‘I’m serious. I’m presenting to the Board at two
and I still haven’t finished the fucking presentation.’

‘The life of a high
flyer. I better get back too…can’t stay here all day.’ And then, against her
better judgement: ‘Did you see Sam this morning?’

‘Jesus Christ, Sarah, why
are you asking about him?’

‘I’m sorry but, well,
you don’t think he suspects anything? I can’t have him finding about us.’

‘How long have we been seeing
each other?’ he asked, buttoning up his shirt. ‘Three, four years? Don’t you
think if he was going to suspect anything he would have done so by now?’

‘I suppose, but-’

‘But nothing, darling,’
he said, leaning over the bed and kissing her forehead. ‘Sam doesn’t think like
that. He idolises you.’

‘Don’t say that. It
makes me feel guilty.’

‘Sorry to break it to you
like this, sweetheart, but you
are
guilty. We both are. I’m his boss and
you’re his wife. I’m afraid it doesn’t get much worse than that.’

‘I know. We’re
terrible. We shouldn’t be doing this.’

‘Like I keep telling
you: what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him.’

‘Maybe, but that
doesn’t stop it feeling wrong. His wife and boss…we’re such a ridiculous cliché!’

‘Well, I don’t want to
spoil the party, but if you’re not happy…’

‘It’s not that and you
know it. Of course I want to carry on seeing you, but after everything Sam’s
been through, I…I just don’t want to hurt him. Not to mention Max.’

‘Nor do I,’ Tom said,
tucking his shirt into his trousers. ‘Nor do I. And remember, you’re not the
only one with something to lose. I don’t want to hurt Jane either.’

‘I know.’ Sarah shook
her head and laughed. ‘It’s weird: the better the sex, the guiltier I feel
afterwards.’

‘In that case,’ he
said, pulling on his shoes before leaning over the bed again to kiss her, ‘I’ll
try not to be so damn good next time.’ He kissed her fully and ran a hand
through her hair, enjoying her taste and feeling himself stir again. He forced
himself away before passing the point of no return, causing Sarah to moan with
disappointment. ‘Until the next time,’ he said, winking at her before walking
across the hotel room and grabbing the door handle.

‘And when might that
be?’

‘I’ll call you. I
always do.’ He blew her a kiss and opened the door. For a split second she
nearly said ‘I love you’, a term that neither of them had used before. Luckily
she came to her senses in the nick of time; she knew that to do so would mean
the end of their affair. Besides, she knew he wouldn’t reciprocate. It wasn’t
like that for him.

The door closed,
leaving her alone with her guilt.

Oh, what a tangled web
we weave. When first we practise to deceive
!

‘For fuck’s sake,’ she
said, burying her head into the pillow. She knew that in the end there was no
simple solution to her predicament: it was impossible to have her cake and eat
it. She may have got away with it so far, but it was only a matter of time
before Sam found out. And when he did, it would tear his world apart. She
couldn’t allow that to happen. As infatuated with Tom as she was, she couldn’t
carry on like this. She knew what she had to do. But not yet.

Not yet.

Max
Railton dawdled along Chaytor Avenue without a care in the world, absorbed in
the screen of his iPhone. Arriving at number thirty-nine he stopped and sat on
the stone wall that marked the boundary of Aunt Gracie’s terraced house, intent
on allowing the music in his ears to finish before going inside. It had been
the exact same routine every day for three years; ever since his parents had
finally allowed him to walk home from school by himself. A token gesture of
independence in an otherwise over-protected childhood.

When the song finished
playing, he unplugged the earphones and slotted them into his jacket pocket.
His parents had been reluctant to buy him a phone, believing he should spend
his formative years playing the kind of antiquated games like Scrabble and Chess
that none of his friends bothered with anymore. Eventually, like most parents,
they capitulated; but not before he had turned eleven the previous year. Eleven
years old! Christ, he’d been the last person in his class to have been given a
phone, or so he’d told his parents.

He walked up the uneven
path to Gracie’s house and paused to collect the door key from his pocket.
One
day I’ll have my own house
, he thought.
And then nobody will be able to
tell me what I can and can’t have.

From the corner of his
eye he noticed Scooch – Gracie’s tabby cat – sitting on the windowsill licking its
left paw. Scooch glanced at him before resuming its business, confirming Max’s
suspicion that it hated him.

The feeling’s mutual
,
he thought, inserting the key into the lock and letting himself in.

‘Aunt Gracie?’ he
shouted, more to announce his arrival than to enquire as to her whereabouts. He
knew exactly where she’d be; the same place she always was.

‘In here, darling,’ she
replied. ‘I’ve made some fresh biscuits!’

‘Result,’ he said,
entering the cosy kitchen-diner and kissing the old woman’s forehead.

She set aside her Wilbur
Smith novel and rose unsteadily to her feet. As far as Max was concerned,
anybody over the age of thirty was ancient, so he would have struggled to get
his head around the fact that the old woman who looked after him for two hours
each day was fast approaching eighty years old. In his eyes, that would have
put her in the same league as Gandalf or Yoda, not that he would have loved her
any less. She wasn’t his real aunt – the only real aunt he had was his mum’s
sister Jennifer who lived miles away in Bristol and only came to visit once or
twice a year. He vaguely remembered his mum once mentioning something about his
dad having a sister too, but he’d never met her or heard his dad talk about her
so had never given her a second thought.

Gracie had been the
manager of the children’s nursery that Max had attended as a toddler. She’d
been in his life from as far back as he could remember, and in many ways she
was like a grandmother to him. After retiring eight years ago at the ripe old
age of seventy-one, she’d kept her hand in by becoming a child-minder for three
of the nursery kids who’d moved on to first school. Max was now the last boy
standing, and the arthritis ensured she wouldn’t be taking anyone else on. Besides,
she was too old. She adored Max: partly because he was a good kid, and partly
because he was the last remaining link to a lifetime spent caring for children.
He didn’t need much looking after anyway – twelve year old boys rarely do - all
he needed was a snack and a roof over his head to tide him over until one of
his parents returned from work and took the baton from her. No, they rubbed
along just fine, Max and her, and she wasn’t looking forward to the day when it
would all come to an end.

‘How was your day?’ she
asked, taking two large chocolate biscuits from the baking rack and handing
them to him on a plate with a glass of milk.

‘Okay,’ he replied, accepting
the plate and getting straight down to business.

‘Never been one to
stand on ceremony, have you Max?’ she said, smiling at him.

‘What?’

‘Never mind,’ she
laughed. ‘You tuck in son. Before you get comfortable, I hope you don’t mind
but I have a client coming in the next few minutes. Would you be a cherub and
take yourself off to the front room for half an hour or so?’

‘No problem. Cards or
Runes?’

‘Not sure yet…maybe
both. I’ll decide when I see her.’

‘Why won’t you read my
fortune?’

‘I will, one day. When
you’re old enough.’

‘Does it really work?’

‘Does
what
really
work?’

‘Seeing into people’s
futures. Telling them what’s going to happen to them and stuff like that.’

‘Oh yes, definitely.
But you have to know what to look for, and more importantly you have to know
how
to look.’

‘Dad thinks it’s a load
of rubbish, but I tell him that he’s wrong and I ask him why so many people
come to see you if it’s all made up. He tells me that people believe what they
want to believe, especially sad, unhappy people who are searching for answers.’

‘We’re all searching
for answers, Max, including your father. But the sad truth is that nobody
really knows what those answers are.’

‘Not even you?’

‘Not even me. All I do
is try to help people find the right path.  I can’t make their choices for
them.’

‘But you do see people,
don’t you? Dead people.’

‘Not always dead, but yes…sometimes
I see people.’

‘Don’t you get scared?’

‘Not any more. I did
when I was young, but you get used to it as you get older. It just becomes part
of normal, everyday life.’

‘Doesn’t sound that
normal to me. Are they friendly?’

‘Most of the time. Not
always. But they can’t hurt you; they’re not real people like you or I, and
they never outstay their welcome. They say what they want to say and then they
go.’

‘Is there anybody else
in the room now?’

‘Yes. There’s a goblin
with an enormous mouth who’s threatening to eat your biscuits if you don’t stop
asking so many questions.’

‘Tell him to keep his
hands to himself!’ With that, Max snatched a third biscuit from the rack and
headed for the sitting room. As he was about to leave, Aunt Gracie called out from
behind him.

‘Max? Before you go…is
everything alright at home?’

‘Fine. Why?

‘Oh nothing…just
asking. Off you go.’

She watched as he
walked away, the thin smile fading as he left her sight. Her attention immediately
shifted to the person standing in the corner of the room: a tall, thin figure
dressed in a tattered grey suit and wearing a shabby brown hat.
A fedora
,
Gracie thought, noting the hat’s wide brim and indented crown.
I haven’t
seen a hat like that in years
.

A dark mist covered the
figure’s face and hid its features from her, and although she couldn’t be
certain, she sensed it was male. It was unusual for a spirit to appear and not
reveal itself; they almost always wanted to be recognised. After all, the main
reason they came was to deliver messages for her to pass on to the living. But this
man had no message. She felt nothing: no good, no evil; only somebody whose
thoughts she wasn’t able to read. But for some inexplicable reason she sensed
he had something to do with Max. There was something about his presence – his
aura – that linked him to the boy.

‘Can I help you?’ she
asked, noticing the lack of hands protruding from the figure’s creased shirt
cuffs.

There was no reply.

‘Why are you here?’ she
asked, growing increasingly uncomfortable. She wasn’t afraid – she’d lived with
ghosts all her life – but they all had faces. They all had eyes. ‘Do you know
the boy?’

‘You’ll see,’ came the
reply, as soft as mist and whispered without emotion.

And then the figure vanished,
leaving the old woman alone to ponder his reply. Was it a warning? Some kind of
veiled threat? Maybe, maybe not, but as she walked towards the hall to answer
the door to her next client, she had an unnerving sense that she’d be seeing him
again.