Page 51 of Giving Up The Ghost
In the thick shadows beneath the bridge, something moved, then stopped.
“Becky?”
She formed from the shadows, glowering and wet as she walked towards me. Her passage didn’t make a ripple in the water or a sound on the stones as she climbed up the bank. “I was visiting my mates,” she grumbled. “How’re you able to make me come here, hm? I could hear you talking to me. What the hell is that about?”
“Is she here?” Ezra asked, looking in the general direction of the bridge. “I can feel annoyance that’s not mine this time.”
“She’s here. I’m talking to her right now. I’m very good at what I do.” I shrugged, figuring she’d be more prone to respond to cockiness than not. “Becky, I need to know about the house.”
“I already told you, didn’t I? It’s like a fucking black hole.” She made a slurping noise, one hand covering the other then spreading wide. “Ghosts go in. but they don’t come out.”
“Which ones, though?” I demanded. “You’re here, you didn’t get sucked in.”
“Naw, not like me.” She laughed, shaking her head at me. “Like your folks, right? And the old ones from up the cemetery. Saw them spookin’ along a while ago. Proper Halloween scary, that was, till I remembered I am too.” She bared her teeth at me, and for a moment, her face was no longer an annoyed young woman but something grim and gray, skin swollen and slipping from her skull.
It only lasted a blink of an eye, but it was more than enough. “Had a lot of time on my hands,” she said, pointing to her face. “Been teaching myself some new tricks.”
“That’s… a commendable effort,” I murmured, only slightly nauseated. “These old ghosts, do you know who they were?”
“Nah. Just they was following that cunt what’s been living there this month. She had a box and they seemed right angry with her about it. Kept trying to swarm her, but she didn’t even stop. Like she didn’t even see ‘em, right?”
I glanced at Ezra. He was used to only hearing one side of a conversation when I was around, but he was still antsy, shifting side to side as he waited. “Confirmation, possibly,” I muttered to him. He nodded, eyes wide. “Becky, you said it’s been a while since you’ve seen my parents. Did they go into the house?”
“Your dad did,” she said. “We was here.” She gestured at the river. “Sometimes they come here. Your dad said it was something some ghosts have to do, go to the place they died. He didn’t know why.” She scratched at her nose, looking back at the water. “Hey, I’m wondering something. What’s this look like to you?”
“The river? Um. Narrow. Dark. A bit cloudy from the chalk it picks up. Why?”
She shook her head. “Sometimes, it looks just like that night. It was bigger, faster then. And I get confused which it really is now.” She turned back to me then, her gaze traveling across Ezra, then up to Julian. “You lot sure are curious about that house.”
“I think the woman there might be doing something with spirits,” I admitted. “And I want to make sure they’re not being harmed.”Because if they were, it was my fault. My fault for pushing, my fault for looking into everything and bringing her out of the woodwork!
“Hm. Right then. Your dad said he felt pulled but that was it. He was here, then he wasn’t. He’s been gone a real long time, I think.” She stared down at her clothes for a moment, then at mine. “When I saw him last time, I think… I think Paulie had frosted tips. Yeah, that seems right. Now he’s got brown hair. I think. Your mum visited a few more times and was pretty sad, even for her. She was gone a long time but came back the other day. Was it the other day? How long has it been since I found you in London? It’s hard to tell time here, unless I really think about it or it’s something big. Like when I see the lights on that house there, it means it’s almost Christmas.” Her expression grew wistful, sad. “I miss eggnog.”
“I suppose Happy New Year would be a bit gauche then?”
She snorted. “Yeah, a little.”
We left Becky after a few more minutes. She drifted back into the river, heading for the bridge. The children still played with the boat floating several inches above the current water level, the pair of them far too close to the water even now. Before she disappeared, Becky gave us a wave over her shoulder and paused to call out, “Hey, you see your mum again, tell her… Tell her I miss her, alright?”
I nodded. “Alright.” Nudging Ezra, I motioned up the bank. “Come on. Becky may have just confirmed Charlotte’s been playing Fellowes Pokémon.”
* * *
Charlotte was still therewhen we returned, though she was sequestered in her suite from the sound of things. One floor above our rooms, she was stomping, shouting, and muttering, opening and closing doors and drawers and generally generating enough noise to drown out anything we might have done ourselves. Ezra opened up his laptop and got started, Julian leaning over his shoulder watching him work.
“You know,” I said suddenly, “she forgot I spoke French. How could she forget when we had several conversations in the language? And she knew I’d spent a semester in Brittany.”
“Worst semester ever,” Ezra muttered. “I kept getting paired with Tom Jordan for everything while you were away. He smelled like pickles and feet.”
I gave him a fond squeeze before shaking my head, something working loose in my thoughts. “It’s just not something you forget, is it?”
“Not usually,” Julian agreed. “Maybe she was lying about forgetting.”
“No… No, she wasn’t. I let her keep thinking it, and she didn’t call me on it. There’s been a few things she should have known but didn’t.”
“Want to hear something weird?” Ezra asked suddenly. “Nadine’s dropped off the map entirely as of a week and a half ago. No spending on her accounts, no ferry or train tickets purchased. Not even a phone call on the number listed as her most recent. Do you have a picture, Oz? I can try to find her on CCTV footage, but this is pretty strange. It’s like she stopped existing.”
“A fifty-something-year-old just dropping off the grid entirely close to one of the most heavily surveilled cities in the world when it comes to CCTV? That’s not great,” Julian muttered.
