Authors: Sarah Dalton
My fingers linger on my neck.
She left no bruise. It was like she had never even been there.
A monstrous child with the strength of five men and the humanity of none.
I shiver again.
The shower turns off with a clunk. My feet slip a little as I step out, and I jump at my own reflection in the mirror. My soake
d, straggly black hair is too reminiscent of the oil slick of tendrils around Amy’s head. Again, I shudder. That image will never leave me. Never.
And now a new mystery.
Seth saw her, and he
knew
her. He said that it was him she wanted.
Why?
That thought continues to plague my mind as I dress and leave the caravan. The air is clean and crisp. It smells like the end of a storm—fresh, but with the slight tang of wet soil. There’s a
chill on the breeze which is pleasant against my clean skin.
I don’t want to be out in the clean air. Every instinct is telling me to climb into bed, pull the covers over my head and
pretend Amy isn’t real. But instead, I’m looking for answers. I’m forcing myself to dig deeper. So I’m going to the one person who might be able to help.
Neil’s boyfriend is called
Lemarr, and has little skulls threaded through his dreads. I’ve never met a mixed race gay Goth couple before, but they’re kinda cute together. Lemarr rolls his eyes at Neil’s lame jokes. They both gush over my “translucent” skin. Neither of them know a ghost is three feet away from them.
It was
Lacey’s idea to meet up with Neil again. After all, he’s the one who knew about Amy in the first place. Now we’re in the village, on a
ghost walk
. Yep, that’s right. After nearly dying at the hands of a ghost, I’m on a damn tour of the most haunted spots in the area,
with a ghost
. Lacey—obviously—finds it hilarious. I had to talk her out of the idea of jumping out of shadows at the other ghost walkers.
It’s all a big joke
. None of these people know what it’s like, and if they’d met Little Amy on the moors, they wouldn’t want to meet another ghost ever, ever again. They’ll never understand how my nightmares will forever be filled with tiny ghost hands against my neck and empty black eyes that search your soul…
I recognise t
he tour guide from the leaflets in the hotel. He’s the kind of guy you’d see treading the boards at the local amateur dramatic production of
Dracula
. He wears the full get up, tall Victorian black hat, coat-tails, black nail varnish… he out-Goths the Goths I’m with; shows them how to do it old-school, with class.
Everything is a performance, from the way h
e speaks, to the dramatic sweep of his arms. As we walk through the cobbles of the old streets, I discover the sordid history of the sleepy town, the opium dens and the arsenic murders, the mobsters hiding in the shadows, the organised crime that filtered all the way down to London from Nettleby; smugglers and wreckers who worked the nearby coastline; desperate men. He then goes on to talk about serial killers from the last thirty years and I can’t suppress my shudder.
“You all right
, love?” Neil whispers. “I didn’t peg you for the easily spooked.”
If only he
knew the truth. “I’m not. Serial killers give me the chills.”
Lemarr
leans forward. “Me too.”
Our tour guide moves on. As we walk around the village, the isolation of the place hits me. I think of the way the moors stretch out on all sides, connected
to the nearest town by one main road and a criss-cross of narrow lanes. There must be something about the moors that attract these murderers—that draw them out.
“Tell us about Little Amy,” someone asks.
Igor pauses. A shadow crosses his face. “That’s one murder I’ll never forget. I knew her, you know, I knew her parents. I don’t like to talk about it, because I knew her.” He shakes his head and looks away.
“Did they ever find the murderer?” another voice, male, pierced eyebrow.
“No,” he says. His voice is small and quiet. “No, they never found him.”
Lacey
glances towards me. “Don’t you think it’s strange that Amy knew Seth?”
The words cut through me. Her face says it all. The murderer was never caught. It happened five years ago. Seth would have been fifteen, Amy twelve. I shudder. No, what is she saying? That can’t be right. I shake my head,
no
.
“Think about it, Mares. Think about the teenagers who have killed younger children, those with
troubled childhoods and a fascination with death. It fits. I don’t trust him.”
I want to scream at her. She’s the one who told me to ask him out in the first place. She told me to go for it, to take a chance.
When we almost died on the Ferris wheel, she encouraged me to put my life in his hands. Now she’s saying she doesn’t
trust
him?
“Not here,” I say with a hiss.
Neil turns to me with a questioning look in his eyes.
We move on.
Lacey is quiet and I exhale with relief. But she never meets my eyes, instead she stares into the shadows between houses like she sees more than we can.
My mind is abuzz with thoughts, so I try to focus on the tour guide and the ghost wal
k. I almost will the ghosts of Nettleby to reveal themselves to me, longing for a distraction. At one point, a burnt girl stares from a window, her face an ember, a lump of coal. Charred ribbons hang from what little hair she has left. I never realised how many remnants there are left from those who have died. It’s not just the ghosts or spirits from the dead, it’s the echoes too—memories from those who knew them, items of clothing passed on to charity shops, antiques sold at auction, the houses standing tall and proud, trodden ground, walked on by millions of feet. No matter where we are, it’s an intrusion on where someone has been, where someone has died. I’m a speck—nothing more, nothing less—one of the billions who will come and go as the echoes remain. Instead of fear, it brings me comfort. I don’t feel so alone, somehow.
Neil gets us a cup of tea f
rom a burger van outside the one nightclub in Nettleby.
“Fancy it?”
Lemarr asks, nodding towards the entrance.
A parade of girls, barely legal, in heels as high as the stack o
f books I have to read, stagger their way down the steps. One pauses to puke.
“Erm, no.
I think I might head back to the site.”
“We’ll walk you home,” Neil says. “You’re pale as milk. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I can’t help glancing at Lacey with a smile. She returns the smile, but with a guilty look in her eye.
“It’s okay. If you want
to go to the club—”
“We’re coming with you,”
Lemarr insists, putting his arm through mine. Neil does the same on the other side.
“Someone wants a threesome,”
Lacey says with a smirk. “You up for it, Mary?”
I narrow my eyes at her. Nei
l notices and frowns. I know he suspects I’m hiding something. What I don’t know, is how deeply he actually believes in ghosts. If I told him, if Lacey revealed herself to him, would he turn and run a mile? Or would he help? Is he someone I can trust?
It’s a fairly short walk back to the campsite. I glance at my watch, not even midnight yet. My mind turns to Seth. There’s no way he’s the killer. He can’t be.
But how else would Amy know him?
Could I risk it? Could I risk talking to him? I think of how relaxed he made me feel, how at ease.
Women felt like that around Ted Bundy as well, you dolt.
But Seth is no Ted Bundy, and
Nettleby doesn’t have a high murder rate. There aren’t scores of missing little girls unaccounted for. There could be many reasons why Amy recognised Seth. Igor mentioned that he knew her. It’s a small village. I can’t make any judgements until I know more about the facts. Then, I’ll have to decide whether Seth could be a murderer. For now, I have to trust my instinct, and my instinct says he’s innocent.
The
Five Moors sign comes into view, illuminated by the moonlight on a clear summer night.
“Home, sweet home,” Neil says.
“What the hell?” Lemmarr stops stock still next to me. His grip tightens on my arm. “Do you see that?”
Large, scrawled red lines appear on the sign as though they are being written by an invisible pen, except the strokes are unlike any kind of pen
I know. It’s more like a fingertip dipped in… in…
blood
.
No.
My throat tightens, my chest heaves, and panic rises from deep in my bowels.
The words spell
:
You’re next.
You’re next.
You’re next.
A cruel taunt followed by a sleepless night of imagining bloodied fingers scrawling along the walls of my tiny bedroom. And when I eventually fall asleep, I dream. Seth features in those dreams. Sometimes the bloodied fingers belong to him, and his impish grin, the one I found so swoon-worthy, turns into a manic smile.
Death seems as attracted to me as a moth to a flame. It’s not so much a lingering odour as a downright stalker. My thoughts are tinged with it, the world is tinged with it,
the bright yellow glow of July turns to the gloomy fade of the coming winter. The few glorious days of summer we get each year in Yorkshire are on their way out. This is it. This is the end.
“Sausage?”
Mum lifts one up with her fork.
My stomach churns. “No
, thank you.”
“Is it because of that nice young man
? Hasn’t he called, sweetheart?”
Dad raises an eyebrow.
“Probably for the best.”
Mum shoots him a glare. “Ignore your father. I thought he was nice.
I have good instincts for people, you know.”
“He never gave me his phone number. He had to dash off the other
day and we never had chance.”
“Oh, that
is
a shame. Still, there are plenty more fish in the sea, darling. What about that nice Goth boy with the hair?”
“He has a boyfriend.”
Mum’s brow creases. “
Really?
Well, I never would have guessed.”
“I think I’m gonna go for a walk,” I say, pushing
away my untouched plate.
On the way out of the caravan, I hear Mum say, “Poor thing.”
It’s one of those mornings where the sun is struggling behind low mist, the kind where there is a dusting of dew in the grass and you button your cardigan to the neck. There’s a hint of a sunny day trying to escape and in need of a little encouragement. The group of Goths in the nearby caravans haven’t woken up yet, but the elderly couple from the disco are power walking around the footpath. I raise a hand to them and say good morning. Then I make my way around our van.
“’
S’up, bitch?” Lacey leaps out from behind the caravan, her image flickering like a flame.
“Do you want
to give me a heart attack?” I ask, rolling my eyes in her direction.
“Well, that would give me some company in the afterlife,” she says with a grin.
On most days, even the tough ones, Lacey’s comic relief is just that. A relief. A breath of fresh air. But today, I can’t stand it. I can’t stand her flippancy when I know what is happening all around me.
“Hey,” she asks. “What’s the matter?”
That does it for me. I find my voice raising. “What’s the matter?
What’s the matter?
Well, let’s see shall we? First of all, I have a date with a guy and almost die when a bloody Ferris wheel goes bonkers. Then I get attacked by a ghost on the moors, oh, and almost die again. Then I find out that the guy I’m sort of seeing might be a psycho, and then, on the way home from a stupid ghost walk, I find out that the stupid ghost who tried to murder me, has sent me a creepy message
in blood
.
That’s
what’s wrong. Don’t you get it?”
Lacey’s
blue eyes flash. Her image distorts like an un-tuned TV picture. “Amy appeared to you again?”
“No,” I reply. “She wrote the message but while she was invisible.
”
“Don’t worry, Mares, we’re going to sort this out,”
Lacey says. “We’re going to stop her.” She pauses, watching me with slightly narrowed eyes. “There’s something else bothering you, isn’t there? What is it? Is it what I said about Seth?”
“I don’t think he’s a murderer,” I say.
“Well, I don’t think we should rule out the possibility—”
“No,” I repeat, firmer this time. “I don’t think he’s a murderer.
Look, you remember how I felt like something was wrong with Dr. Gethen in Magdelena? Well, it’s the opposite with Seth. I know he’s a good person. I know he isn’t capable of murder. It sounds stupid, I get it. I’ve known him a couple of days and that’s it, but it’s more than that. It’s about
me
. I think I have some sort of power that means I can suss people out. I think my instincts are stronger than most people. I can see badness.”