A Ghost Story

A little while ago, I published a one of my ghost stories here.  It was quite well received.  I’ve been writing ghost stories for years now.  I have a few ‘finished’, but not quite finished enough to show anyone – if you know what I mean.  I have many others half-written, or begun, or abandoned.  I have lots of ideas for more, including some with quite detailed notes.  I’m thinking about making a concerted effort to write and finish enough to publish in a collection. I’ve been joking about this for a while but recently I’ve started to think ‘why not?’

Here’s one I finished recently.  In fact, I came back to a story that had been sitting partly written in various versions for ages, and I completed a ground-up rewrite in a couple of nights.  It was all a matter of finding the right tense.  Turned out the story needed to be written in ‘third person present’ in order to achieve the effects I was after.  Sometimes these things can hold you up. 

Anyway, here it is.  I should probably warn you that it goes to some very dark places involving sexual abuse. 

*

The Doves

 

She gets the call a few days after Christmas.  

    “He’s dying,” they say.  “It won’t be long.  He asked for you.”

    “He has other family,” says the woman.  “I’m his granddaughter.  His son, my father, is still alive.”

    “Just you,” they say.

    She goes.  She wonders why she is going.  She wonders why he asked for her.

    She sits by his bed.

    He wakes.

    He sees her.

    He reaches out.

    She withdraws from his touch.

    She wonders if he means to ask forgiveness.

    She realises she came to see him die.

    “Feed the doves,” he says.

    “The doves are all dead,” she tells him.

    “Feed the doves,” he says.

    “You killed the doves,” she says.

    “Feed the doves,” he says.

    “Yes,” she says, “I will.”

    When he slips away, she feels no pleasure, no victory.

 

She inherits his house, his money.  She wonders if it is some gesture of restitution.  

When her parents hear, they will rage.  

She leaves without telling her boyfriend.  The flat is still wrecked, and her body still bruised, from his Christmas Day fury.

 

The house is long and low and white, curving around on itself like a great bleached pelvis.  It sits alone in a valley, surrounded by trees. 

“You could commit a murder out here and nobody’d know it,” says the taxi driver who drops her off.

 

She carries her suitcases up the drive, refusing the driver’s offer of help.  She walks around the house to the courtyard at the back, her footsteps crunching on the gravel path that surrounds the house.  

    She passes a structure she doesn’t recognise.  A detached garage.  He must have built it after the last time she came.  He was always a builder.

    There is a little hill that was never there before either, as if he has excavated and allowed the displaced earth to grass over.

    Beyond the courtyard there is only the woods.  There is no fence.  

She remembers summer nights as a child, at the window of the bedroom that was hers while she stayed, the room that had been her father’s bedroom when he was a child.  She remembers sitting at the window and looking at the dovecote.

    The dovecote is still there, in the courtyard.  It is wrapped in white plastic.  The plastic is tattered and brittle.  It whips and flutters in the chilly, rising wind.

    She tears the plastic a little and looks inside.

    There are no doves to feed.

    Their little dried corpses are still within.

 

He made the dovecote for her between her first and second summer with him.  A white triangle, perched atop a white pillar.  Six windows; three at the bottom, two in the middle, one at the top; six residents perched inside them.  

    “In honour of you,” he said.

    The girl who became the woman cried with joy.  She spent all her time with the doves, utterly captivated by their delicacy, their softness, their whiteness, their willingness to be held.  

    That night, he came to her bedroom the way he had the previous summer.  He found her lying on top of her sheets in her nightgown.  She was hot, that’s all.  Too hot to get under the blanket.  But he thought she was waiting for him.  She said no, as she had on the last night of last summer.  This time, she fought.  He seemed surprised and hurt.  She remembers thinking it was sad he had to go and spoil things after such a nice day.  He withdrew from her kicking legs and flailing fists.

The following night, she found one of the little white bodies broken and bloody on her pillow, its head twisted all the way around.  She never fought again, until the last time.  The next morning, the morning after the time she fought again, she found all the doves dead in the cote, their little necks wrung.

 

The woman carries her suitcases into the house.

    There is a surprising amount of food in the cupboards.  Strange food for an old man.  Tins of letter-shaped spaghetti in tomato sauce.  Chocolate spread.  Jelly.  There are lots of plates, lots of cutlery.  The kitchen table is very large, and there are more chairs than seem needed by a man living alone.  It is as if her grandfather had been expecting company.

    She finds a plastic Christmas tree in the lounge.  

    She switches the lights on.

    She sits down and looks at the tree, trying to reconcile the image of the man decorating a Christmas tree with the image of his face looming over her in the darkness.

    There is something wrong with the tree.  She does not know what it is.  She walks over to it.  She walks around it.  She does not understand her impression.  

 

That night she tries to sleep in her old bedroom.  The storm whips up.  She hears the plastic on the dovecote rustling, snapping.  Half asleep, she imagines the doves are still alive, suffocating.  She imagines the movements of the plastic are caused by their beaks and wings as they thrash and fight for escape.

    She drifts to sleep.

    The sound of the plastic wakes her.

    She gets up.  She goes out.  

The wind and rain lash her, plastering her nightgown to her body.  She tears the plastic off the dovecote.  The wind rips it from her hand.  It flies off across the courtyard, towards the wood, as if trying to escape.

She watches it.  It enters the wood.

She sees it flitting between the trees.

In the gloom, it looks more like a figure.  A slight human figure in a white nightgown.  She might almost be looking at her own reflection, as if the forest were a mirror showing her herself.

 

There is a phone call.  It is the woman’s father.  She will not give him what he wants.  It is not courage.  It is necessity.  The house and the money are her chance, her escape.

    “After all the sacrifices we made,” says her father.

    “I was the sacrifice you made,” says the woman.  “Every summer.”

    “We didn’t know,” he says.

    “You did,” she says.  “I told you.”

    “You didn’t.”

    “I did.  In a hundred ways.”

    “How could we believe it?” he asks.  “How could I believe he’d do that to me?  My own father.”

    “It doesn’t matter,” says the woman.  “In the end, at least he paid the whore and not the pimps.”

    “Don’t say that darling,” says her father.

    “Shut up,” she says, the tears coming.  His pretence of compassion is what breaks her.

    “I want to talk…”

    “Don’t come here,” she says.  “Don’t call.”

    She puts down the phone.

    The phone rings.

    She picks it up.

    “If you call again, I’ll tell.  Everyone will know.”

    She puts the phone down.

    She stands and watches it for a long time.  It does not ring again.

    She rips it out of the wall anyway, just in case.

 

She sees the white thing in the wood again the next night.  

    During the day she did some washing.  She washed a big white quilt.  The day was dry, so she hung it out on the line in the courtyard.  In the night she looks out and sees the quilt moving in the breeze.  It seems longer.  She realises that the figure in white is standing behind it, peeking around at the house.

    She is getting closer.

 

The woman sits and looks at the tree again.  

    The more she looks at it, the more she looks through it, past the branches and baubles and bulbs.  

    There is something behind it.  Someone.

    There are eyes.  Someone is looking at her through the tree, watching her through its arms and needles.

    The woman walks to the tree.  She walks around it.  There is no-one.  

    She walks to the other side of the room.  She looks at the tree.  The eyes are on the other side now, still watching.

   

The woman is in the loft, putting boxes away.  Her grandfather left it empty.

She comes down.  She leaves the hatch open.  There’s no point closing it.  She will need to go back up there soon.  She gets distracted.  She forgets.

    That night, as she is getting ready for bed, she walks under the open loft hatch.  She hears something above her.  Whispering.

She looks up.  She sees nothing.  The open loft hatch is a square black hole.

She stays there, under it, still and silent, waiting.  

At last, she hears weeping.

    She gets the ladder.  She climbs back up to the loft.  She turns on the light.  The bare bulb illuminates the loft.  It is empty but for her boxes.

    She climbs back down.

    She stands at the foot of the ladder.

    She hears the weeping again.  Through the weeping, there is whispering.  Singing.  It is a lullaby, sung through tears.

    She climbs back up.

    She looks again.  Again, there is nothing. 

    “Hello?” calls the woman.

    The singing stops.

 

The woman is asleep.  She lies in darkness, facing the wall.  

She half wakes.  

She heard something.  

She listens.  The silence sings.

Then a sound.  A rustling.  Something brushes the bottom of her bed.

She turns over.  She turns on her bedside light.

There is nothing.

“Hello?” she says.

There is no reply.

She turns her light off and lies back down. 

    It is the fourth time this has happened.  It has happened every night.

   

It is the sixth night. 

    The woman lies in darkness, facing the wall.  

    She hears the sounds.  She feels the movement.  She waits.

    She feels someone sit on the bed.  Her body lowers.  She hears the springs of her mattress creak.  

    Can I sit with you? asks Kiki.

    “Yes,” says the woman.

    Don’t turn the light on, says Kiki.

    “Okay,” says the woman.

    Don’t turn around, says Kiki.

    “Okay,” says the woman.

 

It is the seventh night.

    The woman lies in darkness, facing the wall.  Kiki is sitting on the bed.

“Who is the girl outside?” asks the woman.

    Patience, says Kiki.

    “I want to know,” says the woman.

    Kiki giggles.  She bounces with delight at the woman’s stupidity.

    Silly, says Kiki.  I mean, that was Patience.

    “She’s not the girl in the tree, is she?” asks the woman.

    No, says Kiki.  That’s Rachel.

    “Why does she hide?” asks the woman.

    She’s scared, says Kiki.  She’s scared of everything.

    “Is Patience scared?” asks the woman.

    No, says Kiki.

    “Why is Patience outside?” asks the woman.

    We sent her outside, says Kiki.

    “Why?” asks the woman.

    Don’t ask her to come in, says Kiki.

    “Why not?” asks the woman.

    She’s mean, says Kiki.

 

The woman sits and looks at the tree.  

The eyes watch her.

    “Come out,” says the woman.

    The eyes watch her.

    “Please,” says the woman.

    The eyes watch her.

    “I won’t hurt you,” says the woman.

    The eyes watch her.

    “Please come and sit next to me,” says the woman.  “You don’t have to hide.  Come and sit next to me.”

    You mustn’t look at me, whispers Rachel.

    “Okay,” says the woman.

    If I come out, says Rachel, you mustn’t look at me.

    “Okay,” says the woman.

    She keeps her eyes on the tree as Rachel comes out.  Rachel crosses the room.  Rachel sits beside her on the sofa.

    The woman can see the white of Rachel’s nightgown out of the corner of her eye.

    A hand smooths the garment down the thigh.  The arm is thin.  The flesh is loose.  The hand is mottled grey.  The fingernails are broken and bloody.

    The woman feels Rachel notice her attention.

    You mustn’t look at me, says Rachel.

    “I’m sorry,” says the woman.

    The woman sees Rachel wringing her hands in her lap.

    “You’re so thin,” says the woman.

    I’m hungry, says Rachel.

    The woman brings her food.  Rachel eats it.  She leaves bloody finger marks on the bowl.

    I’m hungry, says Rachel.

 

It is the eighth night.

    The woman lies in darkness, facing the wall.  Kiki is sitting on the bed.

    Can I get into bed with you? asks Kiki shyly.  Nadia says it’s alright, as long as I ask you and you say it’s okay.

    “Okay,” says the woman.  

    She feels the bed clothes being pulled back.  Kiki climbs into bed behind her.

    “Who’s Nadia?” asks the woman.

    Nadia looks after us, says Kiki.

    “Is Nadia the lady in the loft?” asks the woman.

    No, says Kiki, that’s Chloe.

    “Why is she so sad?” asks the woman.

    Just is, says Kiki.  Always is.

    “Why is she in the loft?” asks the woman.

    Her things are up there, says Kiki.    

    Kiki moves.

    Can I cuddle you? asks Kiki.

    “Okay,” says the woman.

    The woman feels Kiki snuggle up against her back.  She feels Kiki’s little hands, little arms, reaching around her, embracing her.   

    She expected Kiki to be cold but she’s not.  It would almost be better if she were.  She’s not warm either.  She’s nothing.  Not cold, not warm.  Just there.  

    Why are you crying? asks Kiki.

    “I’m happy,” says the woman.

    Silly, says Kiki.

 

The next day, the woman goes back up into the loft.  In a far corner, she finds a box under the insulation.  She opens the box.  She drops it.  She lunges away from it.  She crawls across the loft floor towards the hatch.  She throws up through the hatch, the vomit splattering the carpet below.  She lies there, panting, sobbing.     

Put him back, whispers Chloe from the darkness.  

The woman crawls back over to the box.  She picks up the little curled, mummified body and puts it back in the box.  She puts the box back where she found it, and covers it again. 

She says “I’m sorry” as she descends and closes the loft hatch.  

“I’m so sorry.”

 

It is night again.  Kiki lets the woman turn away from the wall, to face her, as long as she keeps her eyes closed.

    “You’re so thin,” says the woman, holding Kiki in her arms.

    I’m hungry, says Kiki.

    “I’ll make you something to eat,” says the woman.

    There’s no point, says Kiki.  

 

In the night, the woman hears footsteps in the gravel path that surrounds the house.  She listens to them crunching past, going far, coming near, going far.

    They stop outside the bedroom window.  There is fumbling at the glass.

    “Patience,” says the woman.

    You mustn’t let her in, says Kiki.

    “I won’t,” says the woman.

    Do you promise? asks Kiki.

    “I promise.”

    I want you to stay with us, says Kiki.

“I will.”

Don’t you want to leave?

“No.  I’ve got nowhere else to go. I want to stay here with you.  With all of you.”

But mostly me?

“Yes,” says the woman, hugging Kiki tight.

You’ll stay with me?

“Yes.”

No matter what?

“No matter what.”

You won’t change your mind?

“No.”

Promise?

“Promise.”

In the morning, the woman finds bloody finger marks around the window frames.

 

The woman searches.

“Where are you?” asks the woman.

    I’m here, says Chloe from the darkness.  I won’t leave him.  He’s mine.

    “No,” says the woman, “I mean where are you?”

    Chloe says nothing.

    “I mean… your baby is there…” says the woman, pointing to the insulation that covers the little box, “but where are you?”

    I can’t tell you, says Chloe.

    “Why not?”

    Nadia says I mustn’t.

   

“Where are you?”

    I’m here, says Rachel from beside her.  

    “No,” says the woman, “I mean where are you?”

    Ask Kiki, says Rachel.  You have to ask Kiki.  And Nadia.

    Out of the corner of her eye, the woman sees Rachel wringing her bloody grey hands in her lap.

 

“Where are you?”

I’m here, says Kiki happily as she snuggles up against the woman in bed.  

And I don’t ever want to leave, says Kiki.

    “No,” says the woman, “I mean where are you?”

    Kiki wriggles.

    You’ll see, she says.  Come and find me.  Nadia will show you.  If I ask her to.

 

The woman walks to the village.  She goes to the village library.  She asks to see the local newspapers.      She is taken down to a cellar.  This all happens before computers.  The local papers are in the cellar.  Piles and piles of them.  Years and years of words growing brittle and yellow in the musty dark.

    “Can I…?” begins the woman.

    “Do whatever you like,” shrugs the youth who led her down the stone steps.  “Nobody cares.  You’re the first person who’s ever asked to see.”  

    He leaves her.

    It doesn’t take her long to find them.  She knows when and where to look.  She looks in the years after she stopped coming to her grandfather for the summer holidays.

    Chloe was the first.  She was 11 when she disappeared.  She was walking home from school.  They found her bag.  They didn’t find her.

    Then it was Rachel.  Rachel was 13.  Rachel finished school, went home alone, and waited for her Mum to get back from work.  Her Mum got back from work and Rachel wasn’t there.  She’d been there.  They knew because she’d started to make herself a chocolate spread sandwich.

    Then it was Patience.  She was 12.  She ran away from home.  It was the third time she’d done it.  She always came back.  Or was brought back.  Until the last time.

    Then it was Kiki.  She was only 9.  The entire family were at home, asleep.  Kiki shared a bedroom with her older sister.  The family awoke one morning to find a window open and Kiki gone.  A year later, the sister swallowed as many of her mother’s pills as she could steal.

    Then it was Nadia.  She was 19.  A student from Latvia, working as an au pair.  Her employers went to London to see a show, leaving their children in her care.  When they came back, the children were screaming and Nadia was gone.  

    The papers say the same things about all the girls.  Bright, happy, popular.  Except Patience.  They call Patience “troubled”.

    The woman sits back.

    Chloe was there the longest.  She grew up in the house.  She had a child in the house.

    My uncle, thinks the woman.

    Eventually, there were so many children in that house, a nanny had been needed.  And so, Nadia.

    The woman looks around.  She sits at the heart of a labyrinth of yellowed paper.  And around it, bare concrete walls.

    A cellar, thinks the woman.

    Yes, says Nadia from the darkness.  A cellar.

 

It is snowing.  The moonlight makes the snow blue.

“Here?” asks the woman.

    Yes, says Nadia from the darkness.  Yes, here.  Come.

    The woman followed Nadia back from the library, back from the village, from patch of darkness to patch of darkness down the lonely road.  Nadia led her past the little hill, to the detached garage.  

The woman reaches for the cord to turn on the bulb.

No, says Nadia.

The garage is full of junk.  Nadia speaks to the woman from behind the old bookcases and mattresses and garden tools.

    Here, says Nadia.

    Here, says Kiki.

    “Kiki,” says the woman.

    I’m here, says Kiki.

    “Kiki,” says the woman.  

    Nadia looks after me, says Kiki.

    Yes, says Nadia, I look after, I look after.

    The woman looks around.

    Here, says Nadia.

    Nadia’s arm reaches out from behind one of the piles of junk.  It reaches through the legs of an upside-down wooden chair.  It points to a moth-eaten rug that sprawls on the dirty slab floor.  It points with ragged, skeletal, blood-caked fingers.  The woman stares at the broken fingernails.

    There, says Nadia.  She points again, more fervently.

    The woman lifts the rug.   

    The woman finds the slab that doesn’t quite match, that isn’t sealed down the way the others are.

    The woman lifts the slab and drags it to one side.

    The woman finds the steps.

    Here, say Nadia and Kiki in unison from the darkness at the bottom of the steps.

    There is a smell from the hole.

    The woman looks up.

    Patience is standing at the mouth of the garage, staring at her.  She is closer than she has ever been before.  Her eyes are huge and dark in her shrivelled grey face.  She points at the woman with bloody, broken fingers.  Her mouth opens wide.  It is a pit of black bile.

    “You can’t come in,” says the woman.

 

The woman descends.  The smell is awful, but old.  It is the echo of a smell that would once have emptied the woman’s guts.  The woman understands the smell.  It is long-ago putrefied flesh, mixed with long-ago dried piss and shit and vomit and blood.  More than that.  It is grief.  It is despair.  

    Here, says Kiki.

    Yes here, says Nadia.

    There is devotion in Nadia’s voice as she echoes Kiki.

    The woman reaches the bottom of the stone steps.  There is a steel guard rail, cold under her palm.

    “Patience is outside,” says the woman.

    You didn’t let her in? asks Kiki.

    “No,” says the woman.

    Good, says Kiki.

 

The woman finds a light switch.  White strip lights flicker on.

    The woman is in a large room.  The walls are unplastered breeze blocks, painted white.  

    There is a structure on the far wall.  It is tall and wide.  It is wooden and painted white.  It is a triangular facade.  There are six windows set into it.  Three at the bottom, two in the middle, one at the top.  Each window opens into a little black chamber.  

    The woman approaches it.

    It is like she has become small, small as a dove, and is looking at the dovecote in the courtyard.

    She gets nearer.  She half looks through the windows into the dark chambers.  She sees, out of the corner of her eye, a hand lying near the entrance to one of them.  The hand is thin and grey and dry and withered.  The fingernails are broken and brown with long-dried blood.

    In here, says Kiki.

    The woman crouches down and looks into the bottom middle chamber.

    The chamber is long.  A thin mattress covers the floor.  It is soaked in dried filth.

    Kiki is in there.  She is an indistinct shape at the back.  A dim outline of white cloth and grey limbs.

    Come in, says Kiki.  

    The woman hesitates.

    Come and cuddle, says Kiki.

    The woman climbs in.  

    The steel grille falls behind her.  She pulls on it but it has locked itself shut.

    I can’t stay, says Kiki.  This isn’t my window.  Mine’s the one at the top.  But we can be together again soon.

    The woman is alone in the chamber.

 

You can come in now Patience, say Kiki and Nadia.

    Tidy up after yourself, says Nadia.

    Patience pulls the slab back into place.  Patience comes down the steps.  Patience comes to the bars of the woman’s window.

    I’m sorry, says Patience.  I tried.  

    “Let me out,” says the woman.

    I’m sorry, says Patience.  I can’t.  I tried to stop you.  But they wouldn’t let me in.  If you’d let me in, I could’ve told you.  But you didn’t.

    Kiki and Nadia and Chloe and Rachel and Patience are there, in the light, all in white nightdresses, all thin and grey and wasted, their eyes huge and dark in their skull faces, their hair matted, their fingernails broken and bloody.  Chloe is carrying a little box.

    “I didn’t do it,” says the woman.  “It was him.  He did it to me too.”

    This isn’t revenge, says Nadia.  This is company.  We will be sisters, as we always should have been.  The last window is filled.  We are complete.

    I’m sorry, says Patience, I tried to stop them.

    I’m sorry, says Rachel.

    Chloe says nothing.  She just cradles her box.

I love you, says Kiki.  And you love me, don’t you?

“Yes,” says the woman.

And this way we can be together, says Kiki.

“Yes,” says the woman.

Just a few days of pain, says Nadia.

The girls exchange looks.  In unison, they climb up onto the facade.  The woman can no longer see them but she feels them climbing into their windows and closing the barred doors behind them.

 

Days pass.

    “I’m hungry,” says the woman.

    I know, says Kiki.

    “I’m hungry.”

    I know.

    “I’m hungry.”

    We all are, says Nadia.  He left us.  They took him in the ambulance.  There was nobody to feed us.  Nobody knew we were here.

    “I’m hungry.”

    I know, says Kiki.

    I know, says Rachel.

    I know, says Nadia.

    I know, says Patience.

    Chloe croons a lullaby through her tears.

 

The woman is eventually missed.  The house is searched.  They do not find the room under the detached garage.

    The story reminds people of the years when girls disappeared from the area.

    The woman’s parents inherit the house.  They sell it.  

    Men come to take away all the junk left in the house.  They take away all the junk left in the detached garage.  They take away the rug.  Nobody notices the slab that does not quite match the others.

The new people move in.  They have a daughter.  She claims the woman’s bedroom as hers.

It is nearly a year since.  It is nearly Christmas again.  The girl’s parents wonder why their daughter seems to hate their tree.

    It is the sixth night.  The woman and Kiki are sitting on the end of the girl’s bed.

    “Who are you?” asks the girl.

    The woman says nothing.

    “Who are you?” asks the girl.

    The woman says nothing.

    I’m Kiki, says Kiki.

    “How old are you?” asks the girl.

    I’m 9, says Kiki.

    “So am I,” says the girl.

    The girl peers into the darkness.

    “It is just you?”

    No, says Kiki.

    I’m here too, says the woman.  I look after Kiki.

    “Are you Kiki’s mummy?” asks the girl.

    Silly, says Kiki.  But she sounds pleased.

    “Please… what’s your name?” asks the girl, addressing the woman.

    I’m Dove, says Dove.