The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women Part 26

Sunday you are in and out of your apartment half a dozen times, and both coming and going you meticulously search the alleyway. There is no sign of a cat, no paw prints in the snow, no urination marks, no blood or tufts of fur from what might have been a battle. Nothing. The evening is quiet outdoors. Inside, you are trapped in a predictable phone conversation with your mother.

"Gena, I'm worried about you."

"Mom, don't be. I'm fine."

"But you're there all alone. You haven't even made friends."

"I've gotten to know Glenn, the part-time accountant I hired last month. And Rod." You are stretching the truth with both of these men, especially the bartender.

"Are you dating Rod?" your mother wants to know, and you repress a sigh.

"Not exactly. I just see him occasionally."

Your mother knows not to push you and segues to one of her other favourite subjects. "Well, that's nice. I'm glad you're making friends. When are you coming home for a visit? It's been almost a year."

"Maybe in the summer."

"That's a long ways away, Gena. What about Easter?"

"I'm really busy at the office and January to May is tax time, the busiest months. I've got to work six days a week to keep the bills paid."

"Do you need money?"

"No, no, that's not what I mean. I'm doing well, the business is growing, but a year isn't long in accounting and I'm just getting known. I'm trying to build my clientele, get on solid ground. I need to feel secure."

The pause at the other end alerts you to the fact that your mother is about to launch into her third favourite topic and you brace yourself for the onslaught.

"Your dad and I visited the grave last week."

You don't know what to say. What is there to say? But, of course, your mother is waiting for a response. "That was nice of you."

"We had to re-cover the rose bush the wind tore the burlap to bits."

"Thanks."

"Gena, Brian would want you to have a life."

"I know, Mom." You speak too quickly and too sharply and try to think of something to say to ease away from this topic and let you off the phone quickly. You attempt to soften what comes next. "I have a life. I'm doing OK."

"There's some sad news. About Ruddie. He died in his sleep last night, on the blanket you bought him. I thought you should know."

Guilt eats through you like acid. The cat you and Brian loved is dead. You are stunned and something thoughtless erupts from your mouth: "He was an old cat."

Your mother pauses a second. "Ruddie never stopped missing Brian. Or you."

The acid guilt you struggle to keep at bay spreads up your chest to your heart. So much guilt! You must get off the phone. Now! "Mom, I'm sorry, I think that's the doorbell, I have to go. I'll call soon."

Before she can respond, you hang up, feeling new guilt pile on top of the old. The moment your caring mother's voice ceases, unwanted thoughts plague you.

You told yourself that Ruddie would be better off with your parents. He was an old cat, and it would have been heartless to put him through the journey across the country and subject him to a new environment. In Montreal, he would not have been able to roam outside the way he could at home. You knew you would be working a lot, building your business; Ruddie would have been alone all the time . . . But no. That is not the whole story . . .

Ruddie appeared the day Brian and I married. As Brian carried me across the threshold of our new house, both of us laughing happily, a sleek, black Hallowe'en cat slipped through the door and wove between Brian's legs. The cat pranced around as if he lived there, tail straight up in the air, purring loudly; he clearly felt at home. Laughing, both of us bent down to pet him at the same time. It was three-way love at first sight. As I took the satiny-furred cat into my arms, his purring ratcheted up a couple of notches. Brian stood looking at the two of us, grinning, then said of the malnourished creature, "I guess we have a furbaby!"

We checked with the previous owners, and our new neighbours, but the cat's home couldn't be traced. It didn't take long to fatten up the hungry stray. Brian named him Ruddie. "For absolutely no reason, but it feels right," he said. I always called him Baby.

Once, while Brian was working in the back of the garden out of earshot planting a line of cedars to cut the wind, I took a tumble down the bas.e.m.e.nt steps, strewing laundry everywhere and twisting my ankle badly. Ruddie arrived at my side, meowing in distress at my pain.

"Ruddie," I groaned, tears leaking from my eyes, "if only you were a dog, I could send you to get Brian."

As if he understood, Ruddie blinked his amber eyes once, turned and bounded up the cellar steps. I heard the cat flap swinging. Within minutes, Brian came at the back door calling my name.

"Down here!"

He found me at the bottom of the steps and sat hugging me while I sobbed.

"Do you think it's broken?" he asked, gently probing the already-swollen joint.

"I don't know if it's broken or sprained, but it sure hurts. It's lucky you came in when you did," I sniffled.

"Ruddie told me something was wrong."

"What?"

"The way he was acting . . . spinning in a circle, crying, like he was in pain. I thought he was having a seizure or something. I came in to get you to come outside and have a look at him."

Just then, Ruddie raced down the cellar steps, purring. He pushed his way between us for a group hug, rubbed his head against Brian's upper arm and then against my face. Brian and I laughed and nuzzled Ruddie back. That's when Brian started calling him "St Ruddie the Rescue Kitty. Our personal St Bernard".

With Brian's death, it was the grief in Ruddie's eyes that you could not bear and you know this is the biggest reason why you abandoned your beloved cat. And now Ruddie is gone, and you might be responsible. Did he die of grief? The grief of abandonment? You can understand that; you feel like both the abandoned and the abandoner and wonder why you wake every day, why you haven't just died from a fractured heart.

Ruddie is gone. Another piece of your connection to Brian has disappeared. The world you three shared has vanished. And you are left here, alone.

Sunday night you lay out clothes for Monday, pop a frozen meal into the microwave some sort of pesto-pasta thing eat it, wash up, and think about TV or the Internet but decide not to bother. You are especially tired, for some reason, the weight of Ruddie's death on your already heavy shoulders, and bed looks inviting. You know you sleep too much, but it is hard to fill waking hours outside of work, and very easy to curl into a ball beneath the covers.

Even before you change into your nightgown, you hear the strange, high-pitched shriek and race to the window. There! The oversized shadow of the cat again, moving along the alley wall.

Spontaneously, you slip on your shoes, coat, gloves, grab your door key and hurry out, determined to find this forlorn waif and bring him in.

No one is on the street, either on foot or in a car. The night has turned bitterly cold and windy. Yet, as you near the mouth of the alleyway, the gale-force wind suddenly dies. The stillness and silence feel unnatural and frighten you. You glance around; it is as if you have stepped into another reality, a surreal snow globe where everything has settled. But you feel very unsettled.

Cautiously, you move down the lane calling for the cat. Every step seems more difficult than the last, as if the air has thickened, and you do not understand why. An eerie feeling creeps over you, leaving you sweating. Then, suddenly, you see him. Ruddie! Turning in circles and crying, waiting for you under the alley's dim yellow streetlight. You cannot believe it is Ruddie, and yet you do you would know your cat anywhere! Joy surges through you, an emotion you never expected to feel again. It occurs to you that you have died. You have found Ruddie and, any second, you will be with Brian again. The three of you will be reunited!

You rush down the snow-packed laneway. "Ruddie! Baby!" He stops and his tail shoots straight up into the air and you hear a familiar meow. You reach him and scoop your beloved cat into your arms. His silky furry face brushes against your cheek so familiar! and his loud purring grows louder, a sound you recognize, one that is embedded in your soul, one you have lived without for a year.

"Ruddie, Ruddie, I've missed you!" you cry, tears spilling from your eyes. "I'm so sorry for everything. Please forgive me."

Your tears become unstoppable and you can no longer control their gushing. Loud sobs rack your body and you can barely breathe from the pain ripping through you. Weakness comes over you and you bend in a crouch, folding in half, as if you have broken in the middle. You feel your soul crack open. You find yourself kneeling, rocking, crying, sobbing calling "Brian", "Ruddie", again and again. Then, strong arms surround you and Ruddie and, finally, the barrier within you gives way, flooding you with grief.

Time has ceased and you do not know how long you have been in this place, suffering a nearly unbearable agony. Only the wind returning and new snow falling bring awareness of where you are coupled with who you are. And with that, another realization: Ruddie is gone. Brian is gone. Forever. But you, you are still here.

And suddenly you view yourself through the clarity of returning memories: I am a person who has lost loved ones. Fate decreed that I, the driver, was not killed in the accident, but Brian, who died in my arms, was. There is no reason why I am alive, no real way of understanding why things happened the way they did. The facts stand: it was the other driver's fault. But facts are cold comfort and have meant little. Guilt has been my tortuous anaesthetic, keeping the more painful grief of my loss at bay.

There is no guilt, only grief. Thank you, St Ruddie. Now I can mourn.

Front Row Rider.

Muriel Gray.

She's not a morning person. Never has been. But lately mornings have become harder than usual. Blinking in the putty-hued square of light from her window she accepts that she has become a cliche, and she can't bear cliches any more than she can bear the a.s.sault of the work-day alarm clock. Yet here she is, lying in a corner of her double bed, bought in a moment of optimism never fulfilled, clutching a damp, compressed pillow. What can be more cliched than the sleeplessness of the haunted?

There is little originality, she thinks, in the troubled creature who nightly thrashes the duvet to the edge of the bed, and hers hangs tantalisingly this morning, as it has on others, waiting to slither from the edge like a linen coin push as she shifts and squirms. Her waking is not gentle, following another night of sweats and nightmares, of falling and screaming and bright lights and hard surfaces, the knowledge presenting itself in the daylight that she won't be able to bear much more of it.

She coughs, out of habit rather than necessity, tugging back the escapee duvet, trying to find solace in its softness, its familiar insulation. Feeling nothing, she huddles and crouches, making a ball of her body like an armadillo expecting trouble.

No part of her even wonders any more. She simply accepts it will happen. Time ticking, days counting, something inevitable approaching. On a good day she asks herself if it might be the same for everyone. Death approaching. The sands running down. Then her heart tells her it's not the same. She won't die an ordinary death in a hospital bed; fixed-smile, grown children at her side, framed by wilting petrol station-bought chrysanthemums. She writhes at the vision she has just conjured. Is that ordinary? Is that desirable? She coughs again, turns, and questions for a moment why she forged an image so dismal.

No matter. She feels certain she will never die a picturesque death. Her future is a blur and not a Norman Rockwell tableau. She has no children, no lover, no life that can be filed under satisfactory. She blinks at the ceiling. Recently painted it offers little Rorschach relief, mocking her with its absence of distraction in peeling patches or dampening blooms. A bland, plain, desert of magnolia, leaving her alone with reality.

She closes her eyes, sighs deeply and gives herself over to the day's simmering fear. She frames the thought by saying the words. Says them in her head and faces the day.

Is he here?

If he isn't here already, then when will he be here? It's the same thought. Every day. On waking. Sometimes the dread cools as the day wears on and she dares to hope. Maybe he isn't here at all. Maybe he's busy somewhere else. Where would that be? Is her haunting unique, personalized, bespoke? Why should it be? What's so special about her? Maybe it's a chain-store haunting. Why shouldn't it be happening at the same time to an Amazonian monkey hunter, a Korean care worker, or an Icelandic property developer? Are they afraid to look people in the eye? Fearful of reflections and shadows? Terrified they will see the face in the crowd, that person who shouldn't be there, who has no right to be there, but who is always, unfailingly, reliably there? What vanity says a ghost is for you alone?

But such musings bring little comfort. The hope of a day without him is always dashed. He will come. Early, late. Day or night. Sooner or later. He will come. She realizes her breath is coming fast, her heart beating too hard. She closes her eyes and composes herself. She can do this. It's a new day and she reminds herself that in this indifferent, enigmatic, ineffable universe, she is lucky to be here.

Without knowing how, she is already at the breakfast table. She stirs her tasteless, colourless cereal, mechanically, without joy. She is at work, staring into the depth of a computer screen, her colleagues moving around her like ch.o.r.eographed dancers. She is in a cafe, the fat proprietor watching the evening news on the wall-mounted TV, arms crossed over his ample belly. Summer bluebottles drone and b.u.mp against the gla.s.s. Her coffee and half-eaten of plate of food sit cold in front of her.

The temperature drops. She bows her head in despair. Here it comes. As always, she feels him approaching before she sees him. Many times she's tried not to look. Tried closing her eyes, or reading a book. But like floating gutter leaves sucked down a drain, her gaze is helplessly pulled towards the point of his appearance. So now, against her will, she looks up, a fearful glance from half-closed lids, her breath blowing vapour into cold air that has no right to exist in this summer heat. The cafe owner shudders and rubs his arm against the sudden icy chill. She waits, heart thumping, but doesn't have to wait long. This time it's fast. He walks swiftly past the grimy cafe window, left to right, adjusting a jumper knotted round his neck, a bundle of newspapers held beneath his bare arm. That's all. It's over. The room regains its steamy warmth. That brief, tiny glimpse, she knows, was all there will be for the day. Just once. Just enough to drain her, tire her, chill her. Defeated, she heads home.

Each night, before she tumbles into scorched sleep, she tries to relive it, to work out what she did wrong, and each night she knows the answer. She turns over on the pillow, draws her knees to her chest. Face it, she thinks. Face the thing that she dreads, the error she made, the turning in life she took that led to this limbo of low-level terror that hums in the background of her life like an electric fence penning her in.

She shouldn't have bought the photo.

She can watch that day in fast forward now. Picking it apart used to take longer. These nights it lays itself out chronologically like a storyboard. This night, it feels different. The story feels alive. She gets out of bed and walks to the darkened sitting room. Pressing back into the hard, worn sofa, a single table light burning low in the bedroom she left behind, she lets her chin fall to her chest and the playback commences.

Jill talking. You're only forty once. Travelling. A package to Orlando, Florida. All four of them. Just the girls. A theme park birthday. Disney, Universal, Seaworld; the greatest roller-coaster rides on earth.

Forty and fat. Forty and a smoker. Forty and making drinking alone a habit. Forty and never having taken a risk, or climbed a mountain, or run a marathon. Forty and never having been properly in love. At least never loved back. Never ridden upside down in a chair on rails at forty miles an hour. Shorthand. Forty. Never really lived.

The girls gabbling. Shouting advice. Make it change. Make it happen. Turn your life around time. Do those things. Stop watching time tick by. Start living, why don't you, gal?

Details of the holiday, now just fragments of memory in a blender. Laughing, drinking, neon lights and the faux-antique wooden booths of cheap themed restaurants. The girls cackling, ruby-red lips open in constant shrieking mirth in their tireless quest to catch the attention of incurious Americans while she cowers in embarra.s.sment. Look at us. Look at the time we're having. Highways crawling with slowly moving oversized cars. Outsized people, outsized food. You must feel like a super model here, laughs Jill. She laughs too, but wants to cry. "Jesus Loves You" sky-written in vapour from a tiny plane, the disintegrating words floating against an azure Floridian sky. She photographs it. Wishes it were true.

All leading towards the moment. The decision.

Her heart couldn't beat any faster in the queue. The Hulk. The fastest, hardest ride in the park.

Libby makes them stand in line for the front row. Keeps barking statistics. World's tallest cobra roll: 110 feet. Launch lift that shoots you from zero to forty miles per hour in under two seconds. Stop it, she thinks. Stop it, stop it, stop it. Front row seats have a bigger queue. Worth the wait, says Jill. Forty-five, maybe fifty minutes. Every one a hundred hammering heartbeats of panic. She sweats. She trembles. And then . . . the b.i.t.c.hes! The rotten, lousy b.i.t.c.hes see a gap for three people, two rows back, and dive for it. Squealing with delight. Waving to her as they strand her in that front-row line. Shouting and guffawing. Roaring that they'll see her at the bottom. She's alone. Made to wait for the next ride. Takes a thousand years to come by, arriving, clunking into place like a mechanized abattoir. A couple of sullen Americans behind push her roughly forward on to the row, the seat at the far side already filled by a young man, staring ahead, calm, like he's waiting in a doctor's surgery. Must have boarded from the fast-pa.s.s queue on the other side.

It's him.

Alone and waiting.

Ahead, a mountain of rails. A metal serpent waiting to receive its sacrifice.

She hugs her knees tighter. It's time to play the next frame again in her head. Again. Again. She plays it until she knows it by heart, because she knows this matters. Somehow it does.

She's shaking. Nearly crying. She's tried speaking to the American couple, her voice too high, too hysterical to sound casual. But Americans don't make small talk. They tell you to have a nice day if you pay them to, but to those without a name badge on their shirt you might as well be invisible. The big man grunts when she giggles the truth that she's scared. The girl stares ahead, chewing gum like it's a ch.o.r.e.

The coaster car jerks up and then down, bouncing as the automatic harnesses lower, pinning her to the back of the seat. She starts to cry. Silently. More alone than she could ever remember.

She can see his face now, still clear, remembering every detail as he turns slowly to look at her, savouring the memory of his irresistibly sympathetic gaze that follows the fat tear coursing down her cheek until it lands on the restraining bar of the seat. She can see that wide, friendly face, a shadow of stubble around the jaw, round hazel eyes, and a head of thick brown hair cut tight to tame curls. Of course she looks at this face every day in the photo by her bed, but the memory, the real sweet memory, is more vivid than the picture. He was English. She thinks she knows that now. She swallows, climbs back into the moment.

He's smiling. Comforting, gentle. He reaches out his hand, places it on the bloodless, tightly clenched claw that's hers, and speaks, a laugh just beneath the voice, but a kind one. Not Jill or Libby's broken-gla.s.s laugh, full of taunts. His hints of mischief and joy.

"You're going to be fine. Just fine."

Then nothing. A void of suffering. Screaming. Pressure. Held back, upside down, body pinned in a vice. Forces working on her, stealing her breath, twisting her gut. But somewhere in the maelstrom of pain, his hand has found hers again, a warm, kind hand, squeezing and rea.s.suring.

And then it's over. She's walking, slowly, like in a dream, weaving unsteadily, sick and sore, to the air-conditioned little booth where a bored Hispanic woman is presiding over photographs of the ride. So dazed she feels she's the only customer, though the ride was full, and the woman leans on her elbow and points with long acrylic talons up at the screens showing digital snaps of every row just disembarked.

There she is. Mouth open in a silent scream, eyes clamped shut, hair flying back, hands gripping the harness. The couple pictured on her left are stony-faced.

And then there's him. He's not looking ahead. He's in profile looking directly at her. What she can see of his face is full of concern. His hand is cupping hers.

There's no hesitation. She buys it. She buys it and now she lives with it. Day and night. On her bedside table from then until now. His face the most familiar in her universe A man who isn't there.

The first time she saw him after returning home was like a miracle. It was the best time. Close to joy. Stole her breath away. Oxford Street. A Sat.u.r.day. His face, unmistakable in the crowd. He looked haggard, world weary, but it was him all right. Her heart in her mouth she ran, and waved, and ran again, but he'd gone. And, oh, the thrill of that moment of recognition. The excitement of that chance sighting. An opportunity to thank him. Who knows? Maybe more than that. A coffee? A reminisce? A laugh? Would he remember her? Did he buy the photo too? Is she somewhere in his life? Maybe not on his bedside table, but dare she hope perhaps on his office desk, or propped up on some shelf full of books? All over the world people cherish their roller-coaster photos taken with strangers they will never see again. Faces glimpsed once then preserved forever. Why not hers? There she would be, the stranger he rode the front row with. She had never wanted anything so much in her life than to catch up with him and put her hand on his arm. But he was gone. His curls lost in the bobbing sea of heads that flowed along the street. She stood for a long time, alone again. Then she went home.

The second time. In the cinema. Too good to be true. Another chance. It must be fate. He left before she could reach him. Then the third. He was on a boat on the Thames. She was on a bridge. When was it? The twentieth time? The fiftieth? The hundredth? When did she wake up and realize that not only can he not see her or hear her when she shouts, screams sometimes, but that maybe, actually, genuinely, he isn't really there at all? Too frightened to call up the theme park, to try and find witnesses to that day, to maybe track down the digital trail of the photo. Too scared in case what she fears turns out to be true. What is he? A spirit? A demon? Worse. A figment of her imagination? She has been beaten. There is no part of her left now that wants to see an alternative photo of her front row ride. A photo in which she is sitting next to an empty seat. So she lives with it. Deals with it.

But tonight she feels different. Tension has been building in her like the close summer air outside. This must come to a conclusion. The burden on her heart is too heavy and tomorrow it will end. She will make it end. She is going to face him, whatever the consequences. She walks back to her bed and curls into her roller-coaster sleep.

Come morning, she waits outside a shop, staring into its dusty window displaying foreign newspapers and bottles of sweet drinks, still and pa.s.sive, knowing he is coming. No need to look. She keeps her back to the street, and shudders against the cold as she feels him pa.s.s by.

A deep breath. This time he won't get away. It's now or never. She walks quickly, weaving in and out of the rush hour crowd folding over his wake. He can't outrun her today. Today her feet have wings. He turns and enters Kings Cross Station. She breaks into a half-run. He's through the turnstile. She has no ticket. She jumps the barrier. Back behind her, maybe someone shouts. Maybe not. She's not sure. She carries on. He's on the escalator. She pushes forward, lightly tripping down the metal stairs, commuters twitching away in dreamy irritation as she brushes by. He turns into the tunnel for the Circle Line. A train is just leaving. The set of his body registers exasperation. He's missed it.

It's the moment. It's now. There's nowhere to run. In just a few moments this will be over. She closes her eyes and sighs. Deep, satisfied. Her eyes open and she calms herself as she walks slowly and deliberately towards him, her breath cooling in the hot, stifling underground air. Everything around her has slowed. The movement of the crowd has been quieted as though caught in treacle. The platform is an eddy in this sluggish human stream, the pa.s.sengers at rest, self-absorbed, patient, waiting. His back is to her as he faces the rails, his body tightly flanked on the left by an expressionless man with a rucksack, and on the right by a bespectacled woman, laden with parcels yet attempting to read a book. A train is screeching from the tunnel, its lights beginning to bathe the rails. The crowd shifts and pushes behind her in antic.i.p.ation and she glides forward.

She takes a deep breath, turning it to icy vapour on the exhale, as her heart beats calmly and steadily now. The train stops and the doors open. He shuffles forward, penned between the man and the woman. She moves towards him. Her hand comes slowly, slowly, gently, up from her side. She lays it on his shoulder and the touch is like an electric shock. He halts, his head turns and he looks her straight in the eye.

He's trying to piece together what's happening, but his breath has been punched from his body and he's gasping like a beached fish. Everything has slowed. The noise of the train, the people pushing past him, even the hot, brisk wind of the underground has turned to sluggish, still cold air around his head. The noises of the station sound like a clockwork music box that's wound down.