13 Tales To Give You Night Terrors

  I saw her as I closed up the video store. She stood in the pouring rain, about six feet from the bus stop, wearing a sheer white dress. Her long brown hair was soaked flat against her scalp and she was shivering.

  "Excuse me," I asked. "Are you alright?"

  She turned to face me. I didn't think she had any idea where she was.

  "Do you know the way to the sea?" she asked.

  I took a step closer, putting my hand in my pocket for my phone.

  "The sea? Miss, you're?this is Nottingham. We're a long way from the sea."

  "They said they'd take me to look at the water," she told me urgently. "They said that it looked different at night."

  I took another step closer and took my hand back out of my pocket.

  "Did they take you there?" I asked her, knowing the answer. She nodded, drops of water falling from the tangles in her hair.

  "I must have fallen?or fallen asleep?" she turned away from me to look up the road towards town. "The water was very dark," she finished, almost apologetically.

  "Right, well?best of luck finding it." I pulled my hood up and turned to head for home when she said my name.

  "I've got a message for you, William." When I turned back to face her she was closer. I could smell sea water. If she'd been breathing I would have felt it on my face. "They want you to come home. Immediately."

  "I'm not interested," I muttered, but she held up her hand.

  "They said? They said 'Tell him it's about Laura.' They said that would get your attention."

  It did. I would have asked what it had to do with my sister, but the dripping woman was gone, and I was standing in the rain by myself.

  The first time I saw a ghost was in that home she was talking about. My family moved to the countryside after my parents came into some money. Both the new home and the new money were supposed to make them happy. It didn't work, but there were a few weeks during which they pretended. It wasn't exactly a mansion, a two-storey, three-bedroom place, but my mum still managed to find places to hide away while my dad continued his journey into depression that we later found out had started years before. Laura found him in the bathtub one evening near Christmas, the water dark red and his wrists wide open.

  If you're thinking that the first ghost I saw was my dad, you'd be wrong. I know, it seems like an obvious one, but an old woman had come to sit at the foot of my bed about two weeks before the big event. Her face was almost impossibly wrinkled, she wore a dark green woollen jumper and she had her grey hair tied back savagely. When I opened my eyes it looked like she was studying me, hand on her chin, wondering what this strange specimen was. I shrank under the covers, and as I pulled the duvet over my head I caught a glimpse of her grinning.

  The apparitions grew increasingly frequent after Dad died. I didn't tell my mum, obviously, I just tried to get on with it as best I could. Everyone assumed that my sleeplessness and erratic behaviour was me struggling to cope with what had happened, a hypothesis that was helped by Laura's lashing out at everyone and everything around her, and Mum's sudden free-fall into full-blown alcoholism. I came to realise that the ghosts weren't so bad. They were never aggressive. That curiosity the old woman had showed turned out to be a common trait. A young boy in a school uniform, a man in dark blue overalls, a woman in her nightgown, they all seemed to be stopping by to check me out. By the time I was fifteen and Laura was eighteen, I had learned to cope, and she was gone.

  That's when the house started acting up. One night, after I'd performed the nightly routine of making sure Mum didn't pass out with a lit cigarette, I stepped into the garden for a smoke myself. The garden was huge but never used. No one ever went further than the patio. As I looked up from lighting my cigarette, a man stood in front of me. He was dressed in a dark grey suit. His grey hair was flattened onto his scalp. He was staring right at me.

  "Are you listening to me?" he asked. From his tone, it was clear there was only one answer, but I was frozen stiff. I'd never heard one speak before. Occasional wailing, or low moaning, but actual speech, speech that was directed at me?that was different. So I stood dumb. "Don't make me repeat myself," he told me.

  I nodded. That was all I could do.

  "We've been watching you for a while now," he said. "You've seen us, and you know we've been watching you. You've had plenty of time here. It's time for you to do what you're told."

  "I'm sorry," I said. "I don't understand."

  "All this?quiet doesn't help us, you see?" he asked. "Your father doing what he did? That was good. That helped. Your sister's rage? Very good. Now, what have we got? Your mother drinking herself to a slow death and your teenage horseshit. It's not enough. So we need you to do what we tell you to do."

  I remember suddenly realising I had a lit cigarette in my hand, and looking down to see if it had gone out.

  "Look at me!" he shouted, and I felt my teeth rattle with the force of it. "Are you going to do what you're told?"

  "What do you want?" I asked.

  "Laura. We want her back. Bring her back to us." He smiled, his lips rolling back to reveal a row of nicotine-yellowed teeth. "She brings a bit of life to the old place." His laugh was more of a cough.

  "Why would I do that?" I asked. The mention of my sister's name had given me a bit of nerve or anger. "She's gone. Why would I bring her back?"

  The lips returned and the smile disappeared.

  "Because if you don't, we'll find a way to punish you for it," he said. "I can think of a good one. It wouldn't be difficult."

  I'd watched Laura spiral for years. I had no idea whether she was happy or not wherever she was, but wherever she had gone, she'd gone by choice. Love wasn't something that was coherently expressed in our family, but I knew that I cared more about my sister than anyone else. As I felt the combativeness build, I realised that I had no idea what this figure was capable of. As far as I knew, his powers didn't stretch beyond speech and intimidation.

  "No."

  He nodded and closed his eyes. Behind him, shadows began to appear. In the course of a few seconds, every figure I had seen in that house stood behind him, their backs straight, their eyes closed. When he opened his eyes, so did they. He was grinning again, and so were they. Rows of white eyes and white teeth in the darkness.

  "Final answer?" he asked. I nodded. "Right. You stubbed your mum's fag out, didn't you?" I nodded, less sure of myself this time. "No, son. You didn't."

  By the time I got to my mother's room, it was engulfed in flames. I tried to get to her, I really did. But I wasn't supposed to.

  I went to stay with my godmother, a nice, well-meaning woman who was busy enough to never push me too hard on anything. The apparitions I saw there were nothing like the ones at the old house. They were mostly lost or confused and didn't have time for anyone's problems except their own. I did my best to move on, but I never forgot.

  I heard from Laura every now and then, and we met up for a pint if we were ever in the same city. Happiness was something that seemed to always be a few steps away from her. If I saw her in person she did her best to act natural, to ask the right questions, and to answer mine in vague enough terms that I didn't really learn anything. I heard that she'd tried to go the same way as Dad once or twice, but whenever I saw her she stressed that she was moving on, doing better, getting better. When she moved to London, I stayed in Nottingham. I was doing OK.

  So getting into my car and driving into the countryside was something that I had to talk myself into. I had no desire to go back to the old place. Laura, though. Laura meant that I didn't have a choice. It looked pretty much the same. We'd paid to have the fire damage fixed out of some vague notion that we might resell it, but something always came up, or we actively avoided it.

  I was standing outside the front door when my phone rang. It was Laura's number, but she wasn't the one on the other end of the line.

  "Is this William Fitzgerald?" asked a woman whose voice I didn't recognise. There was a slight pause after I confirmed, th
en an audible deep breath. "I'm calling from the hospital in Lewisham, it's about your sister Laura. I'm afraid that she's hurt herself."

  "How bad is it?"

  "Mr Fitzgerald, you should really try and get here as soon as possible. I don't think she's going to be here very long."

  "I'm leaving now," I told her, and hung up before she could answer. I tried not to think too hard about the lie I'd just told and went inside.

  They didn't put on a show. The familiar faces stood along both sides of the corridor, waiting for me to walk past, but they didn't give any sign of seeing me. They just stood there. I moved quickly past them and into the kitchen. There he was, standing by the oven. The man in the suit was nearly translucent; he had become wispy around the edges. Dissipating or not, he managed to grin at me.

  "What do you want?" I asked. He pointed up the stairs and was gone. I went cautiously. I took the steps one at a time. The place still smelled of smoke. I'd been back here during the day, but at night, everything was different. There was my old bedroom. There was my mother's room, where she'd? And there was the bathroom, where the light was on.

  Laura lay in the bath. Her eyes were open. Her mouth was open. The water was red.

  "He said it's easy," she said, turning to face me. "He said it's so easy anyone can do it."

  My phone rang. It didn't stop ringing. I sat with my sister for a while. I tried to take her hand once, even though I knew I couldn't. All I touched was dusty old porcelain. I told her I loved her. If she heard it, she didn't let on. Then I went back to my car, fetched the can of petrol, and finished the job that they'd started years ago.

  The fire could be seen for miles.

  I'm sure Laura's still around somewhere. I just hope she's not with them.

  6. WAITING FOR THE WOLF

  Troy H. Gardner, United States