Hold My Hand

I am lying in my bed, alone, and somebody is holding my hand.

It's been this way for as long as I can remember. When I was younger, and smaller, the hand fit mine perfectly. Now I am grown, and the cold little hand squeezes mine for warmth. 

I have never turned my head to look at who is lying next to me, who has shared my bed for all these years. Fear has always stopped me. Not fear of my silent bedmate, who has never given me cause to be frightened, but rather, for fear that if I turned my head to look upon them, they would vanish, go away forever, and I would be left to sleep here all alone in the dark.

Of course it is silly, for an adult to be scared of the dark. But I feel I have just cause, I believe there is something out there we would be wise to fear. For what else could have spurred my invisible friend to reach out for my hand that first night, and to keep reaching, to keep holding onto me ever tighter, every night after?

The Boxing Day Murders - Chapter Four

Danielle leads us without another word to the drawing room, where Greyson, Ben and Penny are all standing around the fireplace, heaving.

A slender, bloodied arm dangles barely visible over the hearth from within the chimney breast.

"Dear God," Alice whispers, crossing herself. I pull her towards me to shield her from the view as the other guests gingerly bring the body down from its sooty grave. At a loss as to what to do with her, we gently carry Sylvie up to the Bedfords' bedroom and lay her on the bed next to them. The aroma in the chamber makes us all gag, and we can't lock the door behind us fast enough.

"She truly was the angel on top of the tree," Penny sobs later. I don't bother to remind her that she was as keen on the idea of Killer Sylvie as the others. More brandy is shared, more morose comments made. The only positive thing about the entire day is the scent of Alice's hair as she leans into me to stop herself shaking.

I sleep fitfully that night with no dreams or spectral visitors. I wake often, haunted not by ghosts but by fear. If Sylvie was not the killer, then who is? As I go through the potential suspects in my mind, each candidate seems more ludicrous than the last. Failed actor who used to run on the fundraiser circuit with Bess. Famous author with a franchise to lose by committing murder. Businessman with shady dealings but whiter than white reputation. And Kit, young charity worker who, it seems, Bess thought the world of.

"Were Kit and Bess close?" I ask Alice the next day, after tossing and turning over the question for half of the night.

"Kit and Bess?" Her brow furrows at the question. "Why would they be?"

"Well she invited him, didn't she?"

"Absolutely not," she corrects me.

"What?"

"Bess didn't invite Kit. She didn't even know him."

"So he was one of Baxter's guests?" Why would my friend have lied about not knowing Kit?

Again, Alice's answer is no.

"All I know is," she says, "he wasn't on the guest list that Baxter gave me. I wasn't actually here when he arrived, I was meeting you at the station. But later Bess said that Baxter had definitely invited him."

"Baxter told her that?"

"No, he told her that. Kit, I mean. Bess told me that he'd said he met Baxter when he was doing those guest law lectures at Exeter."

"He's a law student?"

"So Bess said."

"Interesting," I muse. "Because according to Baxter, Kit worked for one of Bess's charities."

"So neither of them knew Kit?"

"Which means young Mr Foster wasn't invited to the party."

My gut churns as the enormity of what we've just discovered dawns on us both.

"I think," Alice says, "we've just identified our killer."

"Indeed," I agree. "Now all we need to figure out is why he did it."

"Shouldn't we tell people?"

"Not yet. I'm going to go and find him, suss him out. You get everyone else into the kitchen, if the guests are all together then he can't hurt anybody else."

"He can hurt you," Alice protests.

"I'll be careful, don't worry about me. Just remember, Kit can't know that we know."

"Too late," a male voice says from the corner of the room. I instinctively shove Alice behind me as Kit emerges from behind a huge bookcase. I inwardly curse for not being more prudent.

"Alice, run," I shout. I am about to follow suit, but my world turns to slow motion. I see Kit swing something towards me, and I feel the pain, and then everything goes black.

Fanny welcomes me back with open arms.

"Am I dead?" I ask.

"Not at all, just bloody concussed," she says.

"Send me back," I say instantly in response. "They need my help. He's going to kill them all."

"Not if he's clever, he's not." Fanny shakes her head. "But then, since when has murder been about being clever?"

"Fanny, please. Send me back."

"You never did meet Estelle, did you," she says, and the change of subject disorients me further. Estelle appears behind her, as tragic and white as ever.

"What has that got to do with anything?" I ask.

"Everything, can't you see?"

"No!"

"Look closer," Fanny whispers in my ear. "Doesn't she have lovely eyes?"

Then it hits me. Kit's pale blue eyes, husky-clear like Estelle's. The rest of his personage so sculptedly handsome, so similar to how I'd always remembered a young Baxter...

"The affair," I gasp. "You were the other woman."

Estelle nods.

"Baxter never knew I was pregnant. I found out after we'd parted ways, and then..."

She shrugs, as if to say, 'here I am'."

"You died in childbirth," I realise. "That was the 'illness'."

"Yes. Christopher was adopted after I died. He grew up never knowing who his father was, he only tracked him down this year."

"The letters..."

"They were his way of getting Baxter's attention." She shakes her head. "He's been so lost. He feels that he's been cheated of what he deserves, a family name, a sense of belonging..."

"Not to mention the Bedford fortune."

"I'm sad to say, yes."

"So he killed his father and Bess, not to mention his cousin, so that he could claim the estate?"

"He's ill. Marcus, you have to help him."

"He murdered three people in cold blood. If his soul needs saving, it's no business of mine."

"You're going to kill him, aren't you." Estelle's eyes glisten. "You're going to send him here, so that Delilah Bedford can have her revenge."

"I don't kill. But he will be brought to justice, Estelle. In that I have no doubt."

"Please, Marcus. He's my child."

"Children don't do what Kit has done." The sight of Sylvie's arm dangling from the chimney comes to me again, and I nearly retch. "He's no man. He's a monster."

Estelle vanishes, too upset by my words to remain here. Fanny tuts.

"Nothing like telling it how it is to upset some people."

"Fanny..."

"I know, I know. The dream has to end."

"This whole nightmare must end," I say, before the ghostly manor around me begins to melt away, replaced by bolder colours and more solid walls.

"...And he was going to fabricate some blackmail plot, a contested paternity, to cast the blame on somebody else."

What?

I'm tied to a chair, I can tell before I even open my eyes. As I raise my throbbing head, I see Kit standing over me, gesticulating to the other guests. We are in the drawing room and Alice is tied to the chair next to me, dazed. We're props, I realise. He has gathered the other guests to reveal the culprits, in true detective style. In his hand he is holding the letter that I had put in my nightstand, the letter that he himself had written to Baxter, and Baxter had given to me.

"This letter," he tells everyone, "is what he intended to use, I found it in his room."

"The letter you wrote," I rasp. The other guests jump when they realise that I am conscious. "The jig is up, Kit. I know who you are."

"I'm the man who stopped you," he says, pitch-perfect, "you and your accomplice," nodding to Alice, "before you could hurt anybody else."

The drawing room is silent, and it isn't just the rapt audience that contributes to the unearthly quiet; outside, the blizzard has ceased, and Kit's lies are the only sound in the manor.

"Christopher," I say, "tell them who you really are."

"You can stop now, Swift. Your games, your lies, it's all over."

"Fine," I feign defeat. "Then just tell these good people how you came to be at the party."

Kit scoffs.

"I was invited, like everybody else. What are you trying to achieve, Swift?"

"Who invited you?"

"Ba... Bess."

"Really."

"Yes. We were very close, she helped me when I first started doing fundraising. Such a good woman. And you killed her in her sleep."

"You're sure it wasn't Baxter?"

I see Penny raise an eyebrow.

"I thought that you met him at a law lecture," I say. "Wasn't that the case?"

"Shut up," Kit snarls, his mask slipping for a split second.

"You weren't there when I woke up," Danielle whispers. My mind flashes back to Christmas Night, to Danielle leading Kit to her room. The poor girl. She wanted a companion for the night and he wanted a place to lie in wait, close to the Bedfords' own chambers.

"Don't listen to him," Kit says, losing his composure. "He's lying!"

"No," Alice lifts her head and looks him in the eye. "You're the liar. You're the killer. You're the villain, Kit. And you have truly terrible hair."

The carefully constructed performance crumbles before us, and the young man shrieks in rage. He lunges for the wall and pulls an antique pistol down from Baxter's military display.

"Don't panic," I hear Greyson say, "there's no way that thing is loaded." He screams like a little girl when Kit puts a bullet into a sofa. A contingency plan, I see. Very clever.

I strain against the ropes around my wrists and chest, expecting huge resistance, but a sudden chill comes over me, and the scent of cloves fills my nostrils. A moment later my binds lie tangled on the floor.Thank you, Fanny, I think, and I leap to my feet.

Kit flees the drawing room, and I chase him out into the main hall. He opens the front doors and runs out into the night, where a dense fog has fallen on the grounds. I follow him by his footprints in the snow, as he soon disappears in front of me. After a few minutes of running, I slow down, hearing him struggling for breath under a yew tree.

"It's over, Kit," I call out. "You can't achieve anything by this."

"Stay away from me," he yells, waving the gun in my direction.

"Please, just hand yourself in. Save yourself." He says nothing. "It's what your mother wants."

"Don't talk to me about my mother! You never knew her, I never knew her! Nobody knew her!"

"I know you have her eyes," I say, taking a step closer. Kit takes shape in the fog ahead of me. I take another step and I can see him clearly. "And the rest of you, it's all Baxter."

"Baxter who liked to pretend I was never born."

"He wasn't pretending. He never knew."

"Lies."

"It's the truth." I come even closer. "Please, Kit, put the gun down. Before it's too late."

"It's already too late," he sobs. I see it all, and I nearly cry too. I see his hands around Baxter's throat, I see Bess open her eyes a moment too late. I see Sylvie fighting for her life with all the strength in her body.

"This is where I began," he says. "I was conceived here, at this manor. And this is where it ends." Before I can even move to stop him, he raises the pistol and puts it to his own head.

"No!" My protest echoes with Estelle's voice, one that only I can hear.

The gunshot breaks through the night air like a pin in a balloon. It rings in my ears as I run to Kit, as I fall to my knees, red on white flashing before my eyes.

"No..." I say again, my throat thick with a grief that isn't my own. I failed Estelle, I failed to save him.

In the distance, I hear chimes. The village down the road is seeing in the New Year. I kneel in the snow with a dying man in my arms and feel Alice at my back, wrapping herself around me like a blanket. She weeps into my neck and I cry too. Around us, the ghosts stand silent.

The Boxing Day Murders - Chapter Two

I dream of the ghost I saw on the path to the manor. Tawny curls fall over her shoulders, forming a frame for her corseted cleavage.

"Hello lover," she says, leaning on tiptoe to kiss my cheek, leaving the aroma of cloves in the air immediately before me.

"Hi there," I respond, unable to ignore how solid and real her body feels so close to mine, compared to earlier.

"My name is Frances Potter," she grabs my hand and shakes it vigorously, "but everybody calls me Fanny. Do you want to come to my party?"

"Of course," I nod and let her lead me into the same drawing room that I spent most of my evening in. The guests at Fanny's party appear at once to be more diverse in nature than those of the Bedfords, and by that I mean only half them are wearing clothes from this century. A Victorian dandy tips his hat and waggles his dress cane at me in a most suggestive manner, and Fanny laughs.

"Don't mind him. We don't get a lot of living guests, if you catch my drift sir."

"Everyone here is a ghost?"

"All bar you, yes. We're spending the holidays at Bedford Manor, as is the fashion."

A slender lady dressed entirely in white dances alone in the middle of the room, spinning and swaying like a marionette. Her pale blonde hair stands on end and she puts me in mind of Hans Christian Anderson's Snow Queen. From this distance, I find it hard to tell where her glittering dress ends and her bare alabaster skin begins.

"That's Estelle," Fanny whispers in my ear. "Would you like to meet her?"

I try to speak, but I can't. Fanny takes my silence as a yes, and takes me by the hand once more. As we reach Estelle, a rose-red blotch appears on her white, white chest. It grows and spreads, and the ghost's pale blue eyes open wider than I ever would have thought possible, and she screams.

I'm awake in an instant and I know straight away that the screaming is real. I leap out of bed, still in my clothes from last night, my head pounding, and run into the hallway. Sylvie stands frozen outside the doorway to Baxter and Bess's bedroom, tears streaming from her usually heavy-lidded eyes. I walk past her into the room, where Warwick the butler stands over my friend and his wife, taking the pulse of Bess and then of Baxter, before looking to me and slowly, sadly shaking his head. Their eyes are closed, and if it weren't for the bruises on both their necks, I'd swear they were sleeping.

"No..." The word turns to bile in my throat and I think I'm going to be sick. More guests appear in the hallway, Alice among them, and I stumble back to my room, eyes stinging. Alice follows me, grabbing my arm before I can collapse back onto the bed and try to end this bad dream.

"Who could have done this?"

"I don't know..." I struggle to focus on her, my vision blurry and my head spinning.

"Marcus!" She puts a hand on either side of my face to steady me, and the contact brings me round a little. "Marcus, what do we do?" I see her now. Without the usual make-up, with her hair loose and tangled, with shock and grief and fear in her eyes, she is still beautiful.

"We call the police."

"I tried already, it's no use." She points to the window and I see what she means; the view is pure white. "Some kind of freak blizzard, all the cars are snowed in and I can't get a signal on my mobile or the landline."

"That's not possible..." I reach for the phone on my night stand and Alice rolls her eyes.

"Trust me, Marcus, I've tried. We're unreachable."

The full impact of what she is trying to say takes a while to dawn on me, to dawn on all of us. All of the guests go down, one by one, to the kitchen where Warwick has started a fire to dispel the bitter morning cold. By the time lunchtime comes around, it has been decided among us all that Warwick will brave the storm on foot to go and get help. I offer, but Warwick insists that he go alone, showing the dedication of one born into service.

And so the Bedfords' bedroom door is closed and locked, and Warwick sets off wrapped up from head to toe like a belated present, and the rest of us stay in the manor, uncomfortably avoiding the subject that is on all of our minds... There is a killer in our midst.

Boxing Day fades like the drying salt of tears. Before we know it, we're waking up the next morning on the various sofas and chairs in the vast kitchen, aching for hot showers and clean clothes. Danielle looks particularly worse for wear, this being no doubt the longest time she has gone without applying foundation or changing her underwear.

Sylvie has barely said a word since yesterday morning, has barely even made eye contact with any of us. The steely flower has wilted before my very eyes, and my heart goes out to her. I know what a cruel thing it is, to be completely alone in the world. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, let alone a girl who has faced so much loss already.

Ameera hasn't left Hector's side since the bodies were discovered. I still find it bewildering, but I finally believe that it is real love between them. The trust she shows, the complete devotion in her eyes, it warms my cynical heart.

I guiltily realise what I have been doing; observing the other guests, looking for signs of culpability. Penny, the authoress, has been making cups of coffee for everybody non-stop, turning hers Irish on the sly; the actor, Ben, wouldn't stop talking at first about the inhumanity of it all, but he soon stopped when he realised that, trapped as we are, he still didn't have a captive audience. Sleazy Greyson has wasted no time in sidling up to Danielle, who in turn has ignored him and sought comfort from Kit.

Now Kit, he truly baffles me. He doesn't seem as shaken as the others, there is a stillness to him that I saw in Sylvie on Christmas Night, but... I don't know, I sense that he is quietly grieving, 'behind blue eyes' as it were.

Conversation is stilted all day. Nobody dares speak too loudly, or heaven forbid, smile. The blizzard rages on outside, and the ground floor windows are half obscured by the snow. At any other time, this kind of weather would set the stage for all sorts of festive fun; snowball fights and snow angels... But none of us can tear our thoughts for long from the two cold bodies lying in bed upstairs.

Despite the vast amounts of coffee drunk by us all, we are all exhausted. After one night of sleeping downstairs, the other guests seem keen to get back to their own rooms, even if it means splitting up and going upstairs. Before going up myself, I slip away to Baxter's office and retrieve from his desk one of the many duplicate letters he received. In the privacy of my quarters I pore over it, trying to identify the handwriting as that of anybody I knew Baxter to run with back in the old days. Failing miserably, I put the letter in my dresser drawer and get ready for bed.

Lying on my back, staring at the ceiling, my thoughts return to Boxing Day morning, to Warwick shaking his head, to the bruises on their necks... My chest tightens and I feel tears sliding down my temples from the corners of my eyes. I can't remember the last time I cried, not really. Not a gentlemanly quality, to blub at the drop of a hat. But two of my oldest friends have been murdered and I haven't the foggiest idea who killed them – I cry as much out of frustration as I do from their deaths.

Exhausted, I start to see the ghosts before I even fully close my eyes. They come in through the walls, wispy and transparent, reaching out to me...

… And they become more and more solid until they are jostling next to me, dragging me into the centre of a dance.

"Don't be sad, Marcus," Fanny sings, "it's not so bad, you know, being like us."

"Perhaps not," I say, "but a crime has still been committed."

"And there'll be more of that before the year is through," the Victorian dandy adds. "Dark times have befallen Bedford Manor."

"You don't say." My voice is full of acid as I say this, although obviously it isn't this ghost's fault.

"I've seen to it that they're taken care of, if it's any consolation," Fanny tells me, still dancing around me with the others; I make myself dizzy just following her.

"They're here?"

"Yes."

"Can I see them?"

"Afraid not, duck. They're beginners, can't do no haunting just yet."

"I see." Another thought strikes me. "Do they know who killed them?"

"They barely know their own names, love. As clueless as newborns. Don't you worry about them, though – you just leave their wellbeing to me." She slows down, takes a deep mock breath, then pulls me out of the circle dance. "Now. What are we going to do with you? You were much better company last time."

"Sorry. I just have a lot on my mind. Murder doesn't sit well with me."

"Hmm..." Fanny thinks for a moment, then snaps her fingers. "I can see you're not going to be satisfied until we sort that out. Tell you what. Delilah!" This last exclamation is a summons, barked across the room to a formidably built woman dressed from head to toe in tweed.

"Coming, old girl," the woman wheezes, wobbling across the room.

"Marcus Swift, this is Delilah Bedford."

"Bedford?"

"Baxter's maternal grandmother," the tweed lady says, extending a disproportionately dainty hand. I shake it and give it back, rather numb to what is happening.

"Have you... seen them?" I ask. "Since they... I mean..."

"Oh, yes. Awful business. Needless to say, I want you to catch the fiend who did this to them. And when you do..." She leans forward at this point, "I want you to send them our way."

Before I can respond, an ice-cold hand touches my shoulder and I turn to see Estelle, the snowy lady, tears frozen in rivulets down her face.

"Born in a manger,” she whispers. Then, louder: “It's not too late. You can still save him!”

I am about to ask her who she is talking about when Fanny snaps her fingers and the dream ends.

~

Death and Breakfast, Prologue: The Lilly House (Text Version)

Earlier this week I posted a five minute recording of a short ghost story I wrote for Halloween.  "The Lilly House" is a prologue to a longer supernatural piece entitled Death and Breakfast.  Here is the text version:

The dead do not dream.  They do not sleep, or eat.  Nor can they speak.  So the late Edmund Lilly takes his entertainment where he can find it.  And most of the time, this consists of performing tiny, almost imperceptible tricks on his dear wife Aud, with the sole purpose of driving her slowly mad.

They had been married for nearly ten years when she killed him.  In her defence, Edmund acknowledges now that he probably deserved it.  One does not pluck a flower such as Audrey from a field, only to then dally with dandelions like Charlotte.  Odd, he had thought at the time, that Audrey did not kill her too.  But then he supposes Charlotte, a single woman, was not breaking any vows.  The betrayal was his, and his alone. 

But before all that mess, they had been happy.  When they had first bought this house as newlyweds, they had made love in every single room (even the bathroom, with Audrey agreeing to break her own rule just that once).  Edmund can’t quite remember the first time he looked at another woman.  He can’t imagine there was any one moment where his wife stopped being enough for him.  It’s easy enough now to admit to himself that he was a fool back then; perspective is one of the few gifts you can expect after twenty years of floating around the same house, like dust on the air.

Twenty years.  Long enough for every point on his driving license to vanish five times over.  Babies not even born at the time of his death are old enough to drink now.  No wonder Edmund has resorted to moving Audrey’s keys every time she puts them down, turning the lightest of her silk blouses inside out.  He hasn’t the physical power to lift a full cup of tea from its saucer, but he makes the most of what he does have.  Which is just enough to stave off boredom and needle his darling Aud.

Tonight, she sits drinking a gin and tonic at the kitchen table, a Marlboro light burning slowly down in her right hand.  It will be their thirtieth wedding anniversary next year.  Edmund  can tell Audrey has been thinking about it; a string of pearls adorns her slender neck.  The traditional gift for thirty years. 

"I know you're there," she whispers around her cigarette, voice even throatier than usual.  "I wish you could talk to me.  I don't half miss you, you know."

Edmund doesn't quite know how to feel about this.  Truth be told, he finds it difficult to remember how to feel sometimes.  Would his heart swell, if it weren’t buried along with the rest of him beneath Audrey’s rock garden?  He imagines it would, but who knows.

Of course, he is aware that life hasn’t been easy for Audrey either, in the years following his death.  The guilt of what she did haunts her as much as he does.  Everybody in Wren’s Nest, their little corner of the town, thinks she is a loon.  In the olden days she would have been branded a witch.  As it is, she scrapes a living reading tea leaves and cards for the more superstitious housewives in the area.

But the world outside this house is changing.  There is less and less room for superstition and wonder, which means less silver crossing Audrey’s palm.  These modern, cynical times have not passed by unnoticed: her hair, dark and wild like a gypsy’s, is laced with grey like a spider’s web.

And so a new rumour swept through Wren’s Nest earlier this week.  The madwoman is taking in a lodger.  The guest suite on the second floor has been cleaned out and spruced up, and the young woman arrives tomorrow.

Because this story is not just about Audrey Lilly and her unfaithful, ghostly husband.  It is also about something that so many stories have in common, be they fairy tales or urban legends.

A girl in trouble.

Top 5... Ghost Stories

The ghost story has been around since the invention of the campfire.  Since children have woken in the night and asked; "what was that noise?".  The best ghost stories chill you to the bone.  These five paranormal novels provide numerous spooky moments, but there's also plenty of meat on their bones when it comes to characters and plot.

5. Sleep, Pale Sister by Joanne Harris

Effie Gray, an artist's young wife, is drawn into the devious plans of a Tarot-reading brothel keeper in this chilling, lustrous Victorian thriller.  Set against the backdrop of the thriving Romantic art movement, Harris's novel spins a tale of deceit and possession that mystifies and grips at the same time.

4. The Witching Hour by Anne Rice

Michael is saved from drowning by Rowan, an ambitious surgeon.  As an after-effect of his near-death experience, Michael develops psychometric abilities - he can touch an object or a person and experience visions of the past and future.  Rowan soon finds that Michael's powers are connected to her own search for her biological family, after she was adopted as an infant.  Together they discover that Rowan is a child of the Mayfair family, a New Orleans dynasty that also happen to have supernatural powers - powers that have been inherited by Rowan.  This is a hefty read, and at times the narrative can drag (an entire section of the novel is devoted to the generations of Mayfair witches), but the end result is worth it.  This is the first book in a trilogy, by the end of which your head will be spinning with the intricacies of Mayfair geneology and the Machiavellian plottings of the spirit Lasher.

3. Beloved by Toni Morrison

Taking place in the aftermath of the abolition of slavery, Beloved follows Sethe, a mother and former slave who is haunted by the crimes she endured (and committed) in her past.  One day, a mysterious woman arrives at her house.  Much of the novel is spent trying to figure out exactly who she is: simply a stranger passing, or an avenger from the spirit world?  Read it and decide for yourself.

2. Bag Of Bones by Stephen King

Like many of King's novels, the protagonist in Bag of Bones is a New England-based writer.  When he loses his wife suddenly, he is paralysed by grief, and decides to go to their old lake house to mourn.  Once there, he becomes involved in a local power struggle, develops a fixation with the lake, and comes across numerous clues that his wife has not truly left him...

1. Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel went on to win the Booker Prize with her historical epic Wolf Hall.  This novel, by comparison, is less ambitious - but still gives the reader much food for thought.  The central figure in Beyond Black is Alison, a psychic medium by trade who tours the South of England with her manager Colette and spirit guide Morris.  Colette is a hard-hearted harridan, and Morris is just this side of pure evil.  Alison, by contrast, is a large and jovial soul (I kept thinking of Dawn French in the role), or at least, that is what appearances would suggest.  As the reader follows Alison on her seemingly endless stage show around the suburban dystopia of middle England, it becomes evident that she is running from her past, as well as trying to find her place in the world.  Beyond Black effortlessly blends the ethereal with the domestic and is both depressing and hilarious, as the best British fiction tends to be, with something to say about human beings, not just their ghostly counterparts.