The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women Part 15

"Here she is."

They all watched Amanda's approach. When she looked at them, they looked away.

"So you're from England?" It was the new girl who spoke. Amanda nodded.

Kitty leaned in and whispered, "We're to say sorry. We forgot. About playing. Tha's all."

"So wha' happened?" said the new girl, and the questions began, pouring out one after the next.

Amanda told them. But all the time, she thought of the boy: a boy in a red jumper, lacking two front teeth, and about her height. But she never spoke of him at all.

Amanda walked once more up the hillside, away from the lochan. Her grandma hadn't liked her going, but Amanda said it would do her good. A new start, she told her. Some fresh air. And the unspoken thought hung between them that the man who had followed her was dead.

Her trainers gripped the slope. The earth was soft and silent under her feet; Amanda could hear only the constant sighing of wind in the trees. She found she liked it. The cold air made her ears tingle.

I'm not scared, she thought; but it came out scairt. It was funny how that happened. Earlier she had asked Kitty to lend her a pen, but it came out "Could ye-", and she paused, hearing the strange sound. Kitty had smiled, but Amanda had only been able to think of her mother's face: sudden and clear and stricken.

She found the tree easily enough. The shape of a face stuck out of it, but something had changed. Amanda went up close and saw that the grain had split, the cracks widening, changing the shape. It wasn't a face any longer. It was just a bole.

She sat for a while, looking out over the lochan and further, seeing mountains and lochs and sky, stretching on and on. Scairt, she thought. Scairt. No, she wasn't scairt. She whispered it anyway, trying out the sound. Maybe her mother would have liked it, hearing her say it like that. It might have made her laugh. Scairt.

After a while she stood and began to make her way back down the hillside. She was going to Kitty's later. Morag was going to teach her Scottish dancing.

Amanda looked back only once before the tree slipped out of sight. And she saw that the boy wasn't entirely gone, after all: she could still see the gap of a partly open mouth, the s.p.a.ce where his two front teeth should have been. Deep cracks ran down either side of his lips and on, down the trunk. It's only a bole, she thought. Only the grain. That's all. But for just a moment, it had looked as though the boy was smiling.

Seeing Nancy.

Nina Allan.

I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy; Naething could resist my Nancy; But to see her was to love her, Love but her, and love for ever . . .

"Ae Fond Kiss", Robert Burns.

I liked the house as soon as I saw it: a narrow 1930s villa at the end of a long cul-de-sac with allotments on one side and a former Methodist chapel on the other. The chapel had fallen out of use in the eighties. It stood derelict for a while, then someone had bought it and converted it into a music studio. From the outside it still looked like a church and I liked that, too.

The house had pointed gables, and was painted yellow.

"It's perfect, isn't it?" Roy said. "Don't you just love it?"

"Yes," I said. "I love it." Our offer was accepted the same day. By the time contracts were actually exchanged, though, Roy was back in Helmand, and I had to organize the removals myself. I didn't mind. Roy had no patience for things like that. It was something we had joked about in the early days; the ATO with a short fuse, the trained perfectionist who was fine with roadside bombs but who would lose his rag completely if the van with our stuff in it got held up in traffic.

I knew his rages were just a safety valve and in the beginning I found no problem in tolerating them. I even felt a kind of pride that I was the only person who could calm him down. In time that changed. I came to feel that I had been tricked somehow, that the man I married was not the man I ended up living with, although I knew myself that this wasn't entirely fair. The problems had been there all along, and I had chosen to close my eyes to them. I had tricked myself.

He was granted an extended leave after his second tour but if anything his flare-ups were worse. I knew he had seen someone killed, a soldier from his own unit, but he never told me any details of what happened and I knew better by then than to ask.

He seemed to have lost all interest in the house. He moved through its rooms like a ghost, not commenting on the changes I had made, never expressing an opinion one way or the other. Sometimes I would find him in the upstairs room we had planned to set aside as his photography studio, sitting cross-legged on the bare boards and sorting through a cardboard folder of snapshots. The photos were of men on the base, young recruits mainly, soldiers ten years younger than him or even more.

They fooled around for the camera, s.n.a.t.c.hing each other's berets and making rude gestures.

"Is one of these the lad who died?" I once tried asking. Roy stared up at me, blankly at first and then with an expression of such rage I thought he was about to hit me.

Go on, do it, I thought. Then I can leave. I was lonelier by then than I had ever been. I was single for some years before meeting Roy and had grown accustomed to living alone. But sharing a house with a man who had become a stranger to me was something different and awful because I was forced to keep up a pretence that there was nothing wrong.

Worst of all was the fact that I had no one to talk to. There were friends of mine, people who had warned me against marrying Roy in the first place and who would have been only too happy to meet for coffee and a round of sympathetic b.i.t.c.hing, but the thought of such disloyalty sickened me. I knew deep down that those friends who disparaged Roy were less interested in helping me than in being proved right. I would probably have felt the same in their position.

The only person I wanted to talk to was Roy, the Roy I had met and married and whom I now missed terribly. Sometimes in the pale grey hours around dawn I found it easy to imagine that the old Roy was still out there somewhere, longing for me as I longed for him. The man in the bed beside me was someone else. I wondered if he dreamed of hurting me, or of simply packing his things and walking away.

I told myself he would come out of it eventually and when he did we would talk and everything would get back to normal. But in the meantime it was like being in prison. Later that made me think of Allison Rand, and the bars across the windows in the hospital canteen.

I tried to concentrate on the new book, but could not get started. It was not just the problems with Roy. The move had disrupted my routine, and what I was now faced with was a kind of mental blankness. I had lost touch with myself, with the things that interested me. The sense of dislocation was profoundly unsettling. I suppose it was a kind of writer's block, something I had never suffered from before. I took to sitting on a wooden bench up on the allotments, staring across at the yellow walls of my own house and trying to make up a story about the people who lived there.

I liked the allotments, and quickly came to recognize the people who tended them. They were creased and faded, characters from pre-war novels, figures in the landscape of a sepia postcard. There was a Polish woman in a red kerchief, a pair of elderly Oxford spinsters, a man with a Jack Russell terrier, rake-thin and with two fingers missing from his right hand. I used to think about him a lot, wondering if he had been injured in World War II and if talking to him might help Roy.

I dreamed up various schemes for bringing them together but knew I would not dare try any of them. It was all too easy to imagine things going wrong; Roy's rage and contempt for me afterwards if it turned out, after all, that the man had lost his fingers in an accident at work.

As well as the Polish woman and the Oxford spinsters I often saw a young girl in a grey skirt and a baggy green cardigan shapeless, too-big clothes, hand-me-downs no doubt from an elder sister. She stood out on the allotments because she was so much younger than the other people who went there. She had a curious way of walking, heel-to-toe along the narrow pathways, as if she were on a tightrope. Sometimes she picked up stones and put them in her pockets. She was always by herself. The other allotment regulars appeared to ignore her.

She was eight years old perhaps, ten at the most. She seemed young to be there all alone. She should have been in school, though I supposed lots of children truanted. I wondered if she had problems at home.

One day she came and sat beside me. She sidled up, squinting at me from the corner of her eye then plumping herself down on the bench, squarely and decisively, as if carrying out a dare she had made with herself.

She drew her legs up beneath her, and began tapping together two stones I had watched her grub up from the soil of the Polish woman's allotment. It was only then that I noticed how pretty she was. It was not just the snub nose and freckles, the youthful glow that haunts all children, even the plainest. There was a life in her, an animated curiosity that seemed to light her features from within.

She banged her stones, skewbald flints, and darted her eyes to where mine had been looking, up towards the first floor of my house.

"There was a murder there," she said. "Right there in that house. Do you know about it?"

She had a Scots accent. I felt surprised by this without knowing why. I wondered if she had been watching me, noticing my presence over the weeks as I had hers.

"A murder?" I said. "Aren't you a bit young to know about things like that?"

She looked at me as if I were stupid, which I suppose I was. "It happened ages ago," she said. "There's nothing there now." She gave her stones another bash then dropped them in the dirt at her feet.

"I'm there," I said. "That's my house."

She turned and gawped at me. Her eyes were bright with amazement, as if what I'd just told her was the most incredible thing she'd heard in her short life.

"No way!" she said.

I nodded. "There aren't any ghosts, though; it's just an ordinary house."

"Do you believe in ghosts, then? I mean, really?" She edged towards me along the bench. I felt her hand brush the seam of my jeans. Roy and I had discussed having children once or twice but it seemed a long time now since we'd had a proper conversation about anything. I remembered Roy had been keen on having kids, though. I was less sure.

"I don't know," I said. "But I know I've never seen one." I thought of Roy and me, the remnants of our past that stalked us daily. But these were not the kind of ghosts the child was after.

"Here, ghosty-ghosty!" she cried. She raised her hand and waved up at my window, her fingers spread like the limbs of a small white starfish. Then suddenly and without warning, she jumped off the bench and ran away down the main path that cut through the allotments and then joined the road. The man with the Jack Russell was coming. I watched the girl circle the dog, then dart in to pat its chocolate-coloured head. The man with the missing fingers did not look up.

A sheet of newspaper flapped across the ground by my feet. Rig Disaster Claims More Lives.

That story was three weeks old. For the people who made the papers it was already over.

When I looked back down the hill the Jack Russell man was still there but the girl was gone.

What she'd said, though, that preyed on my mind. I knew children made up stories constantly but I knew also that these rarely came out of nowhere and I wondered if there might be some truth in it. If she had not known where I lived when she first spoke to me, why would she invent things about my house?

No one had said anything about a murder when we first bought the place, but it's hardly the kind of thing an estate agent is likely to advertise. I felt a flicker of something, a stir of interest, like a piece of string uncoiling deep in my gut.

I thought I might finally have found my next book.

Roy was out when I got home, as he so often was. When he wasn't staring at his photographs in the front bedroom he was on one of his walks, endless, meandering rambles along the roads and country lanes that skirted the town. On those days it was as if he was afraid to be inside, as if our house had become a symbol of confinement and oppression. I had worried about this at first, concerned he might cause or become the victim of an accident. Now I was simply relieved to find him gone.

I booted up the computer and googled our address. I was amazed by how many results there were. The usual estate agents' adverts and map references, but the majority of hits seemed to relate to a woman named Allison Rand. I had never heard of her before, but a few quick searches found me the information I needed. She was forty-five years old, and had taught history at one of the local secondary schools. She had been convicted of the murder of her two infant daughters.

There was a verdict of cot death on the first child, but when the second had died eighteen months later and in identical circ.u.mstances Allison Rand was arrested and charged. Steven Rand, her husband and a teacher at the same school, divorced her and sold the house. Allison Rand protested her innocence throughout.

The case had an air of desperate tragedy about it but Allison Rand seemed more like victim than villain, and in any case it didn't feel right. The girl on the allotments had said the murder had happened a long time ago, yet the Rand case was in the relatively recent past. My first reaction was of disappointment, but the more I read, the more I wondered if there wasn't an article in it at least, something I could sell to a magazine on the back of my last novel.

"How I Came to Live with a Murderess", that kind of thing.

It was a cheap trick but at least it was something. It might even help me break out of my block.

If Allison Rand would talk to me, that was. The idea of making contact with her was strangely exciting, and once again I felt that stirring, that sense I was on to something. I felt better than I had done in weeks.

I wrote to Allison Rand, care of the governor of the secure mental hospital where she was being treated, and asked if I could come and see her. There was no reply so I wrote again. After about a week I received a terse reply from the governor's office, informing me of the visiting hours and that I was free to put in a formal request. I had the feeling I was in for a long wait, so I took a chance and wrote to Allison Rand personally. As an afterthought I enclosed a copy of my latest novel. Not long afterwards I received a brief note from her, telling me she had added my name to the list of approved visitors. I sent her a postcard by return, informing her that I would come the following week.

I didn't tell Roy what I was doing. He was due to return to his unit in a couple of days. On the day I confirmed my appointment with Allison Rand, he returned to the house after dark, stinking of beer and cigarettes. He looked sheepish, almost guilty, and for the first time since he'd come home he seemed eager to talk.

"I'm sorry, Marian," he said. "I've been acting like an a.r.s.ehole. I don't know who I am any more."

He was always conciliatory when he wanted s.e.x. I had come off the pill while he was away, and felt a rush of annoyance with him for his thoughtlessness, for the selfish way he a.s.sumed I would be ready to patch things up the moment he felt he needed a little comfort. Where had he been when I needed comfort? I didn't refuse him, though. I told myself it was because I couldn't face another row, and that was true. But mainly it was because I still loved him. I supposed I always would.

"We should have kids," he said before he fell asleep. His arm lay across my shoulders and for the first time in many months he seemed fully relaxed. "Wouldn't that be great? A house like this needs kids in it."

I had been on the verge of sleep myself, but his words had me wide awake again. For some reason I found it disturbing, shocking even, that he should make a connection between the house and having children. For a moment I considered waking him, telling him about the Rand case, but I didn't do it. I knew how crazy it would sound if I did, and Roy had enough craziness in him for the two of us.

I thought instead of the girl on the allotments, her baggy cardigan and too-big skirt. I wondered if her mother knew she was skipping school.

"You write about murder, then? That's what you do?"

We were in the hospital visitors' lounge, a large, light, square room overlooking open countryside. We had been talking for about half an hour, the usual introductory pleasantries followed by my own vague questions about hospital routine. It was all basic stuff, background material at best, and I found the constant presence of the male security staff disconcerting. Yet in spite of these restrictions I found myself enjoying the conversation. The newspapers had portrayed Allison Rand as a plain-faced, mousy little woman, the archetypical dried-up blue stocking. In reality she was much more attractive, with small hands and firm cheeks, her grey eyes articulate and clear. She was like a bird, I thought. A wren perhaps, or a hedge sparrow. She was dressed simply, in clean faded jeans and a check cotton shirt. If I hadn't recognized her at once from her photograph, I would have a.s.sumed she was an off-duty nurse.

She was clearly an intelligent woman. Her question about murder came completely out of the blue.

"I write crime novels," I said. "I don't suppose I can tape this?" I had been obliged to leave my phone at reception, along with my purse and my car keys, but I still had my iPod, which also had a Dictaphone function. Rand glanced furtively in the direction of one of the uniformed male nurses and then raised an eyebrow. I lifted my hand to push back my hair and, as I lowered it again, I brushed my fingers against the iPod's tiny 'on' switch. Rand's neat, lipstickless mouth curled in a half-smile.

"I don't mind what you do," she said. "But I don't think I'll be much use to you."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because I haven't committed a crime. I've never even stolen stationery from the school supply cupboard." She gave a harsh laugh, and for the first time I saw the brittleness beneath her apparent composure. "I enjoyed your book, though I didn't expect to. Perhaps it's true what they say, that deep down we're all in love with violence." She folded her hands in her lap and clenched them together. "I don't know why I'm telling you this, but I'm going to anyway. I didn't want children. I don't mean I actively disliked them, but I enjoyed my studies and I enjoyed my job and later on I enjoyed being married. I didn't want children to change things, as I knew they would. But Steven was keen, and I didn't want to disappoint him. We didn't conceive, though. Years went by and nothing happened and in the end I stopped thinking about it. Then suddenly there Sophie was.

"I loved her from the moment I knew I was pregnant. One day there was my old life, and the next there was this new one, something I had never guessed at, something that swallowed the entire world as I had known it, but I didn't care. What I cared about was Sophie, and when she died I stopped caring about anything. Even when I got pregnant again with Alana I didn't care, because I knew already that I would lose her too. Perhaps there's a writer out there somewhere who can convey what that feels like, but I doubt it."

She took off her gla.s.ses. The round, wire-framed lenses reflected the red Formica surface of the table, twin versions of Mars. Without them she looked both younger and more desperate.

"What do you mean, you knew you would lose her, too?" I said. I felt she was holding something back, either because she felt guilty or because she didn't judge me worthy of knowing. I wondered if it was this way she had of acting superior even when she didn't mean to that had turned the jury against her. I knew the actual evidence had always been minimal.

"It was the house," she said. "Don't tell me you haven't noticed?" She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and began polishing her gla.s.ses. It crossed my mind then that she was guilty after all. That she had killed her two baby girls, and doing it had driven her insane.

"Noticed what?" I said. In the whole of the hour I'd spent with her she had not made a single reference to the fact that I was living in what had once been her home. Now it seemed it had been at the forefront of her mind all along.

"Why do you think I agreed to see you, to talk to you like this? I did it because I felt I should warn you, that I could do that at least. There's something in that house, and it killed my daughters."

"You're not serious?"

"Believe me or not, it's up to you. Just don't bring any more children into that house."

She put her gla.s.ses back on, becoming the sane and matter-of-fact ex-teacher I had met when I first arrived. What she was saying was so out of kilter with the way she looked I found myself wondering if her madness wasn't contagious.

"I'm not sure what to say," I said. "Are you talking about ghosts?" I remembered the child from the allotments, calling up at my window and waving her hand. Ghosts were just a game to her.

Rand smiled.

"Ghosts have no physical power over reality. All they can do is manifest themselves, cast an influence. That's what the experts will tell you anyway. I know you only came here for a story and I suppose you think you've got your money's worth. Don't think I don't know how I sound. But I've done my best to warn you and that's all I can do." She paused. "All life's disasters sound insane if you try and explain them out loud, have you ever noticed that? I would never have believed a word of this if it hadn't happened to me."

Soon afterwards the bell went and I had to leave. I told her I would come and see her again, not knowing if I meant it or not. I pa.s.sed along the corridor to the exit, where a member of the security staff stood ready to claim my visitor's pa.s.s. The view from the first floor was a swoon of greenness, and when I learned later that the building had won several industry design awards I wasn't surprised. But when all was said and done it was still a mental hospital. There were security guards at all the entrances, and every outside window was barred.

I drove home slowly, taking the back roads to avoid the rush-hour traffic. As I turned into the narrow lane that led to our house a child dashed across the road in front of the car. I slammed on the brakes, swerving instinctively, but when I stepped out of the car there was no one there. I cooked supper then made coffee and began playing back the tape of my interview with Allison Rand.

The house was quiet, so quiet, and when a knock came at the back door it startled me so much I almost fell off my chair. Roy and I had never mixed much in the town, and I had no idea who my visitor might be. For a moment I found myself wondering what I would do if I opened the door to find Allison Rand standing there, a knife in her hand, her lips stretched in a tight little smile. Such things were not unheard of. You read about them in the papers every day.

It was not Allison Rand though; it was the girl from the allotments. I had not spoken to her since the day she had mentioned murder in my house, although I had seen her up at the allotments a couple of times since, playing with the Jack Russell terrier on the unkempt patch of gra.s.s behind the man with the missing fingers' wooden shed. She was wearing different clothes: a floral summer frock in printed cotton. There was something old-fashioned about it, and once again I had the feeling it had been altered to fit her. She had no coat on, no cardigan, though the evening was not particularly warm.

"I brought you something," she said. "Look at this."

She thrust something at me, a piece of paper. It was a newspaper cutting. I expected to see some faded headline about Allison Rand but I was mistaken. The cutting showed newspaper coverage of the trial for murder of a woman named Lorna Loomis. Part of the article was missing.

"You should have some warmer clothes on," I said. "You'll get goose b.u.mps."

She made a face, and I noticed that in spite of the evening chill her skin showed no sign of gooseflesh. It was the colour of chalk, sprinkled with pale brown freckles.

There was no photograph of Lorna Loomis. She had lived in the town though, the article said so. She was what used to be called a widow of independent means.