Enter the Dead: A Supernatural Thriller (26 page)

‘Why
didn’t you wake me? You should have woken me up as soon as you listened to the
message.’

‘You were snoring so
loudly that I doubt that a herd of elephants stomping through the bedroom would
have stirred you. Besides, I didn’t want to wake you; you were out like a
light.’

‘Even so…’

‘You shouldn’t be up.
You’re too ill.’

‘I have to go and see
her. Do we have any Paracetemol left? I checked the cupboard but-’

‘We’re all out. Don’t
you think you should ease off on the painkillers? You’ve been swallowing them
like sweets.’

‘So would you if your
head felt like mine. It doesn’t matter,’ he said, pulling on his overcoat and
fastening the buttons, ‘I’ll stop by the pharmacy on the way to Gracie’s.’

‘Why can’t I come with
you? I don’t understand why you have to go alone.’

‘I won’t be long,’ he
said, ignoring her question and putting on his hat, wincing at the incessant
throbbing in his skull. ‘I just want to pop over there and make sure she’s
alright.’

As he walked to the
front door, Sarah stepped in his way, blocking his escape route. ‘What’s going
on, Sam? What the hell was that message about? Why are we in danger? What is
she talking ab-’

‘It’s nothing.’

‘Don’t lie to me,’ she
said, struggling to maintain her composure. ‘There’s something going on, isn’t
there? Come on, Sam, tell me. I’m not stupid…I know Gracie a damn sight better
than you, and I know she’s not the sort of person who’d ring up and leave a
message like that for a joke. What’s going on between you two?’

‘Like I said, it’s
nothing. Now are you going to let me go or not?’

‘I’m sorry, Sam, but
you’re not going anywhere until you tell me what’s happening.’

Sam sighed heavily.
‘Fine, I’ll tell you the basics, but I should warn you that you’re not going to
like what I have to say.’

‘Go on.’

‘Gracie told me that
there’s a man – a spirit – who keeps on visiting her. For some reason, she
believes he has something to do with me. She thinks he could be my father.’

‘Your father? You’re
joking, right?’

‘Yeah, I know – it
sounds crazy. Except for one small, insignificant matter.’

‘Which is?’

‘I think she might be
telling the truth, because I think I’ve seen him too.’

‘You what? What do you
mean?’

‘That’s the problem; I
don’t really know what I mean. You have to remember that I’ve never been one of
Gracie’s biggest fans, and in the past I’ve never bought into any of that
Scooby-Doo bullshit that she believes in. But lately, for about a week or so, ever
since I found out about you and Tom, I’ve been having this weird feeling that
someone’s been watching me.’

‘When?’

‘Loads of times. It
started the other day when I went home, then when that Gilchrist kid laid into
me at the train station. In the park just before I passed out – that was
particularly bad – and then yesterday, at Tom’s funeral.’

‘What did you see?’

‘I can’t say for sure
what I saw. All I know is that for the past week or so there’s barely been a
moment where I haven’t been either physically ill or mentally screwed up.’

‘Considering what you’ve
been through, it’s hardly surprising. The physical stuff I can understand - you
just need to get plenty of rest and keep taking your medicine. It’s the mental
side of things that scares me.’

Sam shrugged. ‘Me too,’
he said, staring at her helplessly as he struggled to maintain his composure.
‘There’s something wrong with me, Sarah. I don’t know what it is, but the more
I think about it, the more I think that everything that’s happened recently has
somehow been my fault. It’s like I’m the cause of it all.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Stephen Gilchrist
killing himself, Tom shooting Charles Holdsworth and Gabrielle Williams…even
you…’

‘Even me?’

Sam was crying now,
unable to hold back the tears any longer as he continued: ‘You and Tom…your
affair. Maybe it was my fault…maybe if I hadn’t been such a lousy, unemotional
husband…maybe you wouldn’t have been so open to his flattery…maybe you wouldn’t
have felt the need to be with anyone else.’

Sarah took him by the
shoulders and gently shook him. ‘Look at me, Sam. Look at me! That’s ridiculous
and you know it. It was my fault, not yours.’
Was it, though?
she
thought, her mind drifting back to when she’d first succumbed to Tom’s advances.
Wasn’t at least part of the reason you went with Tom because he made you
feel wanted and sexy and good about yourself, whereas Sam hardly ever
complimented you or took the time to ask you about your day or how you felt?
Sam certainly hadn’t been a bad husband, but his inability to express his
emotions had often made her feel as if he didn’t truly trust her. And then along
came Tom, overwhelming her with compliments and lavishing her with attention.
She realised now of course that it had all been just lies and false praise spoken
with the sole intention of getting her into bed, but at the time she’d been
swept away with the thrill of it all. Could she have stopped herself? Yes,
probably. Was it her fault? Of course it was, but perhaps not entirely. Affairs
of the heart are seldom straightforward; rarely do people decide to break their
marriage vows if everything is rosy at home.

‘Can we talk about this
later,’ Sam said, wiping the tears from his eyes with his jacket sleeve. ‘I
need to go and see Gracie.’

‘Why can’t I come with
you?’

‘Because I don’t want
you to. I won’t be long, I promise. I just want to make sure she’s okay. I need
to talk to her alone.’

‘If you’re sure,’ she
said, stepping aside to let him through. ‘Just be careful, okay? You have to
remember you’re under a great deal of stress at the moment.’

‘No offence,’ he
replied, taking Max’s set of keys to Gracie’s house from a hook by the front
door, ‘but I’m fully aware of that fact.’

‘I’m just saying,’ she
said, her voice softer this time. ‘Take care, okay? I love you very much. I
don’t want anything else happening to you.’

Sam opened the door
before turning around to face her. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, forcing a weak,
unconvincing smile. ‘Nothing’s going to happen to me, I promise. Besides, I
think I’ve had enough bad luck to last a lifetime, don’t you?’

‘I hope so.’

‘Goodbye,’ he said.
Without waiting for a reply, he turned up his collar and walked outside, doing
his utmost to suppress the pain raging inside his head. When he was half-way
along the street, he glanced back to see if she was still watching him. When he
was sure that she’d gone back inside the house, he reached into his pocket and
pulled out his phone. Without pausing to stop, he dialled a number and held the
phone to his ear. It didn’t take long for the person at the other end of the
line to answer. Sam smiled, comforted by her voice.

‘Hello, mother,’ he
said, taking a deep breath before continuing. ‘There’s something I need to ask
you.’

‘Sam?
Is that you?’ Janice Railton asked. ‘Where are you? I can hear cars. Are you
alright?’

‘I’m fine,’ Sam
replied. The walk from his house to Gracie’s usually took around five minutes,
seven if he called in to the pharmacy on the way, but he knew it would take him
longer this time. His head pounded in unison with every step, forcing him to
adopt a slower, gentler pace to dampen the pain. ‘I was just taking a walk when
suddenly I thought how nice it would be to hear your voice.’

‘Come on, Sam. Out with
it.’

‘Eh?’

‘You can’t fool me…you
can’t lie to save your life,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong?’

Unable due to the pain to
walk and talk at the same time, Sam stopped by a bench and sat down. ‘I need to
ask you something,’ he said, closing his eyes and thinking how best to phrase
what he was about to say. Whichever way he looked at it, she wasn’t going to
like it. ‘I need to ask you something about dad.’

His request was met by
silence, the kind of prolonged hush that typically follows news that a close
family member has been diagnosed with inoperable cancer or has been involved in
a fatal accident.

‘Mother?’

‘Why now?’ she asked,
matter-of-factly.

‘Why now what?’

‘We haven’t talked
about your father since the day he died, so why are you bringing him up now?’

‘I know it sounds
weird, but I wanted to ask you about him.’

‘No, Sam. We don’t talk
about him. That was the agreement, remember?’

‘I know,’ Sam said, his
voice hoarse and uneven. ‘I’m sorry, mother. I don’t mean to dredge up the past
like this, but…but it’s important. You see, I’ve been dreaming about this man
who keeps appearing in all these difference places. It’s like he’s following me,
haunting me. I can’t seem to be able to get him out of my head, and I think –
and believe me I know how crazy this sounds – but I think that it might be dad.
They’re only dreams,’ he said, choosing at this point to diverge from the
truth, ‘but you see I can’t actually make out his face, so I can’t say for sure
whether or not it
is
him. All I know is that it feels like him.’

‘In what way?’ Janice asked.

‘I don’t remember that
much about him,’ Sam said, thinking back to when he was a boy. ‘I vaguely
remember what he looked like in his pitman’s uniform, when he would come home
from the pub after work, stinking of booze and shouting the odds. But apart
from that, I can’t remember him.’

‘I never kept any
photos of him. I destroyed them all after what happened to Lucy.’

‘I know you did, but
it’s not so easy to get rid of the photos that are stored in your head. I
remember how scared and on-edge I used to feel whenever he was around. It was
like walking on egg shells, always wondering if he was going to lose his temper
and lash out. And it’s that same feeling of living in fear that I feel when
this figure appears in my dreams. But because I can’t see his face, I can’t say
for sure that’s it him. What I do know is that he’s tall and thin just like dad
was, and I can also make out what he’s wearing, and that’s what I wanted to ask
you about.’

‘What he used to wear?
You want to know how he used to dress?’

‘Yes. You see…the man
who I see in my dreams is always wearing the same clothes. He’s always dressed
in a baggy grey suit, only the suit is torn and ripped in places. And he has
this old-fashioned brown hat; I don’t know what you call it but it has a wide
brim and is-’

‘It’s called a fedora,’
Janice said, her voice barely more than a whisper. ‘They used to be popular in
the fifties.’

‘Oh…right. Did dad used
to-’

‘A long time ago, yes.
Stop messing around, Sam.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘This isn’t funny.
Where did you get the photo from?’

‘What? I didn’t…I’ve
never seen any photos of him. Like you said, you destroyed them all, remember?
I swear on my life that I haven’t seen any…on Max’s life.’

‘Don’t do that. Don’t
bring Max into this.’

‘It’s true though,
isn’t it? Dad used to wear those clothes.’

‘Yes, but so did a lot
of young men back then, especially that type of suit. We used to call them
Zoot
Suits.
’

‘Zoot suits?’

‘Yes. Your dad was very
fond of them when we first met. He used to love the old black and white
gangster movies: you know - Al Capone, Chicago, prohibition - where the men
used to dress smartly and fire machine guns at each other.’

‘Vaguely.’

‘Before we had you, we
used to go the cinema all the time. He wasn’t so bad then; the drink hadn’t
completely taken over and turned him into the bastard he became.’

‘Is it dad?’ Sam asked,
ashamed to be upsetting his mother like this but nevertheless needing to put
his mind at rest. ‘The man in my dreams…is it him?’

Janice sighed heavily.
‘Your father was wearing an outfit like that on the night I first met him. You
won’t be surprised to hear that he was drunk, but then again so was I. It was
late, I was outside a bar. I was with someone else at the time; a young man
called Greg Andrews. Your dad was in a gang…anyway, he ended up having a fight
with Greg because he attacked me.’

‘He attacked you?’

‘I know, I know…I had a
habit of falling for the wrong men. I certainly knew how to pick ‘em. Anyway,
they had a fight, your dad won – he very nearly killed Greg – and then the police
came and threw him in a cell for the night.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘What happened was that
I ended up making the biggest mistake of my life. The following morning, I went
to see him. He was in a heck of a state; bruised and battered, and his clothes
were torn. He looked like a tramp. God knows why I went but I did. I suppose I
had this misguided notion that he’d rescued me from Greg; a knight in shining
armour I guess. That, and the fact that he wasn’t at all bad looking. Listen,
Sam, I’m sorry but I don’t want to talk about him anymore, and to be perfectly
honest, I don’t think it’ll do you any good either. They’re dreams, Sam. Just
dreams.’

‘So that explains the
suit,’ Sam said, ignoring her. ‘That explains why it’s torn.’

‘A total coincidence,’
she replied, although from the unconvincing way she said it, Sam sensed that he’d
struck a nerve.

After a considerable
pause, he said: ‘You’re right. I’m sure it is only a coincidence. Like you
said, that was the fashion back then. The man in my dreams…it could be anyone.’

‘That’s right. It could
be anyone.’

‘Look, mother, I’ve got
to go and see someone. I’m sorry for bringing him up without any warning.’

‘It’s fine,’ Janice
replied. ‘You can’t escape the past. In the end, it always catches up with you.
Anyway, apart from that, are you okay? How are you holding up?’

‘I’m alright. Look, I’m
sorry but I have to go now. I’ll call you soon, okay?’

‘I’ll hold you to
that,’ she said, but before she had time to add
I love you
, he had
already hung up the phone.

Little did she know
that this would be the last time she would ever speak to her son again.