Josie’s eyes were wider than dinner plates. “Are you seriously trying to scare the crap out of me? That’s a story for sleepovers or campfires, surely?”
Joe shrugged, not laughing. “All these stories have a basis. Somewhere. The children’s ghosts are said to be trapped there, screaming still.”
“Stop it,” Josie snapped. “Are you done?”
“One other thing, and the reason I mention all this. The girl only screams once, and only when something terrible is about to happen.”
“And the other two times were…?”
“Man fell through the floor of his flat into a take-away’s kitchen, been dead for days. And three people were killed in a bar fight down Micklegate.”
“Coincidence.”
Joe fixed her with an unreadable gaze. “We’ll see.”
“It’s a square with a shop in the middle,” Josie mustered her courage, wondering if this were Joe’s way of a test. “You go left, I’ll go right. We meet at the top.”
Joe nodded and walked off immediately. Josie was left with a thundering heart and two fists clenched so tightly her finger joints hurt. She made to move forward but fear made her freeze. For one moment there was an urge to flee, a bright red-hot sting of self-preservation, but then she remembered just why the Hell she was here. In this job. On this night.
She had seen more selfless love since the birth of her daughter than she ever thought possible. Emily was born premature and admitted to the wonderful care of SCBU, the Special Care Baby Unit of York District Hospital. Her husband had then left her citing that he needed time to concentrate on his career. Since then people had been helping her. The incredible, selfless nurses of SCBU. Her family. Even his family. Neighbours. Now Simon.
And then Emily herself. She found out quickly what only a true parent can ever know- that a child can turn sadness into joy with but a single chuckle.
And when Emily started school, Josie found herself with a little more time, a new partner, and the chance to pay it forward and pay it back. So she enrolled with the police force.
And that’s why she stood here, now, in this fog-bound alley with the stark moon above and the harsh, slippery cobbles below. She could hear Joe stamping along to her left as if trying to warn something to take cover.
Her feet carried her safely forward. That was the first shock. The second was that nothing jumped out at her. The shop windows reflected blackness as deep as the darkness in Charon’s soul. Something glimmered in the shop, and when she cupped her hands to peer inside she thought she saw something move. A slither of silver.
But it was only a water fountain, left running by the careless staff.
Further round now, about half way, and the darkness swallowed her whole. She could no longer hear Joe’s dependable step, not any living noise at all. She might as well have been in Freddie’s dreamless nightmare-land, awaiting the click clack of those terrible finger-blades.
Christ, Josie, stop that!
She tapped her telescopic baton for reassurance and adjusted her stab vest. She thought she heard Joe talking to someone, just a sibilant whisper but definitely his tones, and strained her ears to listen.
And it was right then that something shot out of the darkness. It could have been a cat. It could have been an owl slipping by on whispery wings. But when Josie turned her heart already knew what she was about to face.
The apparition loomed out of the black towards her, a tattered grey face with a mouth stuck open in a wide, silent scream. Empty eye-sockets that led to a lonely death, as unspeakable as anyone could imagine. Wild, ragged hair that hung in shreds at the front and exploded messily around the skull.
Josie staggered backwards, all thoughts of Emily or Joe forgotten. Her mouth opened in its own scream and her legs gave way like frail twigs under the weight of falling blocks. She fell onto her rear, scrabbling her fingers around the slimy cobbles for purchase, but the spectre didn’t come any closer.
Josie saw the wraithlike face begin to crease. The mouth worked without sound.
Oh, my God, Josie thought. It’s trying to say something!
There came a moment, suspended in time, where Josie felt she might go insane, where a mountain of murk and shadow rose behind her eyes and threatened to fill her brain and leave her a frenzied, gibbering wreck. The phantom looked almost sad; it made no further threat towards her.
And then she heard Joe’s own scream of terror, a scream cut off so suddenly he might have had his head torn off.
Josie leapt to her feet and felt a fleeting pride as she gained strength born of love for Joe. She turned her back on the ghost, fighting the mental strain, and raced back around the corner of the shop to follow Joe’s route. Twenty seconds later she fell to her knees and skidded the last few feet to his side.
The old officer was lying on his back, still breathing; his eyes were wide and staring at the cold, cold sky.
Josie felt a moments relief. “Oh! You trip and fall over your own…”
Then she saw the trembling right arm, the drool slipping down her friend’s chin and a heavy hammer-blow struck her to the core.
She fumbled for the radio. “Hurry, oh hurry,” she screamed at the receiver. “Joe Morris is having a heart-attack!”
At that moment there was a hideous scream right behind her, something that made her own heart jolt like it had been juiced by a thousand volts of sizzling electricity, but when she turned around she saw nothing.
The radio fell from her nerveless fingers, smashing to the floor.
PART 2
Back at the station, Josie sat with her head in her hands, staggered as her superior, Paul Kett, spoke eight words that struck her core like black bolt-lightning, as black as night, as black as death.
“Joe died on the way to the hospital,” Paul Kett’s hard exterior melted as he saw her grief. “I’m sorry, Leigh. Josie, I’m so sorry.”
She stared into space, unaware of the tears coursing down her face. Words turned to ash in her throat.
“We all feel it,” Kett said, again letting his guard down. “Believe me.”
“I do,” she managed. “Oh, God!”
“What the Hell happened?” Kett was pushing her, she knew, to make her talk, to help compartmentalise the grief.
She met his eyes for the first time. Paul Kett was a tall, economical man, with a full mouth and a way of talking that was both respectful and blunt. He was down-to-earth, tough on the outside but, as Joe Morris had told her, a totally different man when he invited you to his home- you saw him then as the man he was- a loving father with a dry wit.
“She screamed,” Josie said. “As if all the demons of Hell were chasing her. She screamed.”
“Who? Who screamed?”
Josie stared at the wall clock. It was ticking softly, measuring out the last seconds of her career if she told the truth. “I don’t know.”
Kett sent a glance towards the clock. “It’s seven A.M., Leigh. You’ve forgotten what happened in two hours?”
She’d never forget what happened. The words threatened to rush out of her, but she compressed her mouth into a harsh, thin line, stopping the flow.
“I don’t have time for this.” Kett stood and came round his desk. “We’ve too many man hours invested in finding this grave-digging child abductor to waste any more time. How the hell could anyone bury a child, for God’s sake? So, tell me, you were near Little Stonegate, right?” He paused. “See a ghost?”
Josie’s eyes betrayed her before her mouth even had chance. Kett shook his head. “We’re cops, Leigh, we’re practical, honest, hard-working cops. Anyone who’s ever walked a late beat in York has a story. We’ve all seen something we’d rather forget. It was one of the kids, right?”