The Man in Black: A Ghost Story Read online

  “An’ he’s off,” they both said.

  The sky above started to blacken and the evening began to spill in eerily. Somewhere afar a thunder roared, and it was moving in fast. I felt some rain hit my face, and then a premature snowflake.

  “Time to get in,” John said. “Have to wrap up them cold shoulders, aye?”

  I smiled. “Aye.”

  John turned away and made for the steps. He looked back one time.

  “Lovely seeing you,” he said. “Lovely.”

  He disappeared above.

  Violet moved in closer, placing her old hands on my arm.

  “An educated girl with a bright future, you are, love,” Violet said, almost sympathetic looking. “I can tell, so get out an’ live life as you meant it.”

  She turned away and joined her husband above, slamming the door shut, shutting out the oncoming storm with it.

  I had questions in my head. Some about the dog, some about John and Violet. I put them aside and looked up at the cumulus clouds, floating lazily. I thought about the dog. Where would it shelter? How would it keep dry? Perhaps someone took it in come the darkness of night. Perhaps not.

  I was about to go back inside when I felt a shiver run down my neck, sharp and precise like the scratching of a fingernail.

  Behind me, watching.

  I turned around but there was nothing, just a swirling, grieving wind and a heap of snow. The hole in the wall stared down at me like some guilty reminder. I looked into the alley but only the spades left behind by John and Violet stood, wet with the melting snow.

  I went inside, locking the back door and pulling down the nets behind me, lighting some pillar candles on my way into the sitting room. Outside, the storm kicked up and the wind howled full of sound for the very first time. The spades collapsed with a clash.

  That same evening, once I’d undressed down to my underwear and soaked my cold feet in a warm bucket of water, I lit the stove and fried up some supper. Though the walls and the ceilings of my flat were cold, made colder by the lack of soft floors and hung-up painted vistas, the warmth from the stove grew big and fierce and warmed the room well. The smell of bacon fat circulated, and I couldn’t help but smile to myself at the thought of John and Violet soaking up the smell of their childhood from upstairs, grin-faced and warm with tea. I thought I could smell their cooking, but perhaps not. The elderly rarely eat late.

  But then, after the food was gone and the warmth had stooped, the night crept in a little darker than it had been at twilight and the room suddenly felt a little colder. I decided to turn in. I slipped out of my bra and pulled some blankets over my shoulders, then settled into rest.

  The night came as silent as it always did. No wind blew. The storm had disappeared as quickly as it had stirred up.

  I slept through the night and into the next evening, undisturbed.

  I awoke to bitterness. Outside, the snow had fallen again, and the walls and ceilings of my room had grown moist with damp and droplets of water. I wrapped the blankets around my naked waist and lit the stove. It was Monday, and I’d missed a shift at the butchers. I didn’t think much of it, but thought more of the state of the kitchen. Pans lay scattered across the floor, cupboard doors were open, and the lightbulb above the front door swung. It was as if someone had rearranged my life overnight, as if I had meant to sleep for so long. I gathered the pots up off the floor and put them away, then turned around to face the kitchen window.

  It was then that I saw Him for the first time.

  A face at the pane, undefined and ageless, but very much that of a man. His elderly face, cut deep in wrinkles, stared firmly. Blood foamed at the sides of His lips; I could see clearly that something had cut Him, it was deep and unmistakably a gaping wound. His thin, bony fingers pressed at the glass and His eyes looked sunken in His skull, dark and buried. His black collar blew, but there was no wind. Everything was silent. It was as if He was One with nature. Snowflakes fell around Him like ash. He looked like the centerpiece of a poorly taken photograph; hazy and out of focus, nothing more than a chill in the air, an immovable aura.

  I jumped up and ran to the back door, as frightened as I was.

  But, no.

  He was gone. The window looked out over the fields, as clear as anything. I opened the door and ran around to the window, but there was nothing. One blink of an eye and everything I saw was nowhere to speak of. I looked down at the ground, but there were no prints. I turned to the glass, and there they were: black fingerprints against the pane. I touched them, pulling away soot. It stuck to my fingers like thick, black tar.

  The snow on the ground lay untouched. The hole in the wall was blocked up with snow. The gate was firmly shut. My first instinct was to check the steps leading up to John and Violet’s home. Could it have been John? Was he hurt? I checked the alleyway and the steps, but everything was untouched. I saw a light from their window above. Both of their shadows entwined. It wasn’t them.

  I gave up, looking around one last time before heading back inside. I decided to get ready, and I put on my boots and my thick outdoor clothes. I kept looking back at the window, but there was no sign.

  He had longed where I lived.

  With the thought of His face deeply rooted in my mind, I decided to shake it off by leaving the flat for a walk. The day had passed, but I didn’t mind. It was still light.

  Outside, the trees stood anorexic and elderly from across the valley and the air smelled as gentle as it normally would. A breeze swirled, picking up snow from the ground and kicking it up across the street. I looked out across the moors and thought of my dad, my mam, and how I’d come to live in a place I was never really destined to live. A lifetime of promises, all gone now. My dad was gone, my mam was gone, and anyone else I could think of, was gone. I thought of John and Violet upstairs, how Violet said to get out and live the life I was meant to live. An educated girl with a bright future, she said. If only getting out was so easily done.

  The air cleared my lungs. I breathed deeply and walked out into the fields. I must have walked for an hour before I turned back and headed home. The horizon was closing in, and His eyes flashed in front of me, black and decrepit and sunken into His face like two shimmering pebbles, like someone possessed.

  I walked and walked, my legs tired now and my chest beating rapidly. I made it to the front door and stumbled inside.

  That was enough, I thought.

  But then I saw the woman in the street, heavy with snow on her shoulders. She stood as still as the row of terraces behind her, watching me, peering in through the front window as I struggled to catch my breath. I grabbed the doorknob and locked it, pulling at it hard to make sure I was safe. She never moved. I just stood there, my feet aching in my cold boots, my legs shaking.

  First it was Him, and now I had someone else watching me? What was she doing out there, solitary in the snow?

  I closed the curtains fast. I ran to the kitchen and locked the back door, too. I stumbled around the stove and managed to light it. My hands trembled for all they could. There was something going on, but I didn’t know what.

  I walked back into the sitting room and got my clothes off. The curtains stared down at me. Shadows from outside crept up through the gaps in the fabric, piercing the walls. I felt her there. I felt her outside, standing, waiting for me to look out from between the nets.

  I heard someone outside, close.

  Snow shuffled from under the front door and a shadow passed the window, elongated and thin. It stopped in front of me. I kneeled down by the door, my hand tight around the doorknob. It stared.

  It was her.

  I closed shut my eyes as tight as I could. My voice wanted to speak out, to scream. Being alone in a place of such depravity is frightening enough. What if she wanted to get in? What if this was her house? Had I wronged her?

  I opened my eyes. The shadow was gone. The curtains let in the hue from the streetlight outside, but that was it. I jumped up and threw open the curtain
s, gritting my teeth and clenching my fists. She was gone, a trail of bootprints left behind atop the cobbles. Small feet.

  Now, that was enough. I checked the doors and the windows once more, then slept.

  THE BOOTPRINTS

  I worked late the following day, not getting home until around seven. William had to open late because of the snow out in the country road; it had piled up deep, and his car had gotten stuck. His thinking was to keep the butchers open a little later. We got a few in, but not many. I was left to shut up shop and make sure everything was done for Wednesday. William mentioned my missing shift when he finally made it through. He said he’d take it off me and that there were plenty of others desperate for my position. That was true, there was, and I’d never forgotten how lucky I was to work so close to home in a place so desperate. But I slept through straight, and that I couldn’t help. He gave me a warning of sorts, but seemed to brush over it before he left, promising me some good meat come Friday.

  The face at the window still pestered in the back of my mind. The woman in the snow, watching, lingered like some distinct memory. The evening was chilly that night, but not too cold. It was a warm sort of chill.

  I rarely used the bathtub under the stairs. The last tenants had left it black and filthy. One day, during the first week I moved in, I scrubbed it clean and bathed for a whole hour. The water was always hot despite the freezing temperatures outside. The pipes were inside, and so they never froze over. I’d decided to use it again after my shift. I filled it up with boiling water from the pot on the stove first then filled the rest with water from the tap. I wriggled out of my work clothes and slipped straight into the bath, the hot water numbing my feet.

  My mam had always said I had the body of a child, even after I grew up into young adulthood. She said I was pale like a workingman’s housewife. On the Rotten Row, I suppose I could be, but she had a point. My body was curvy, pure white and thick at the thighs. My mam was thin and bony and bronze, even in the winter. I followed after my dad, most likely. I had his crooked eyebrows.

  I never did like my feet, or my hands; they were too chubby. My hair was probably my only good feature. Long and black, hazel eyes. I didn’t mind that at all. I had a boy back in school. His name was Jack Hunter, and he would always comment on my hair and my eyes. It made me confident about them ever since.

  I always loved the feeling of a hot bath, when your fingers would wrinkle and your skin would blossom red as if it were about to peel off. I washed with soap and a sponge and used a cheap shampoo from the corner shop. Lavender was my favourite scent, it always smelled so expensive to me.

  I lay in the water for a good half hour. I’d washed my hair and scrubbed my feet. I began on my body, cleansing myself down of all the dirt and the stench that life on the Rotten Row attributed. I liked the way it felt.

  I closed my eyes and thought of Jack, those old summer days so distant. I thought about the times in his room, the times behind the back of school where no one would ever come looking to find us, how he would be so delicate. I thought about Mr. Oldman, my old English teacher.

  I began slipping.

  Sleep, sleep, the steam rises.

  The room went silent all of a sudden, the water no longer lapping between my thighs or behind my neck.

  Then I heard the footsteps, but I couldn’t open my eyes. I was stuck. I breathed deeply, inhaling the hot steam.

  Tap, tap, I’m right behind you.

  I felt a hot breath on the back of my head, a cold finger through my wet hair. I heard heavy boots walking around the bathtub, around and around until it wasn’t footsteps anymore, but just banging.

  I tried to stretch my eyes open, but something was keeping them shut, as if there was something I wasn’t meant to see.

  The noise kept on growing until the bathtub began to shake. Water spilled out onto the floor, and my hair began to knot.

  I was being pulled.

  I tried to scream but my mouth wouldn’t open.

  Something yanked my hair back, pulling at my scalp. I thought that my head was about to ripped from my neck, the force was so strong. A hand grabbed the front of my neck and pushed me down beneath the water. It tightened, and my eyes opened.

  My windpipe tightened.

  I could see Him, blood pouring from the sides of his mouth and into the water. Before long all I could see was red and all I could taste was copper, like a mouthful of pennies. It spilled through my closed lips and down my throat. I sputtered and the water bubbled above me, His face murky now.

  Out, out, out from my house, I hear you at night, all alone, in MY HOUSE.

  I heard him whispering in my ear, yet He wasn’t there. The face had vanished. I climbed up out of the bathtub, blood in my eyes and on my tongue, yet the water was clear.

  I clambered onto the floor, my naked body shivering. I spat out the clear blood and looked around me, but I was alone. He was gone, but His bootprints remained, a circle around the bathtub leading out into the kitchen.

  I followed them.

  They were large and traced over each other as if He walked backwards, or perhaps He just disappeared. Whichever, they came from outside. Melted snow trailed back through the kitchen. They ended at the back door. I rattled the knob. It was locked.

  I struggled for breath as I sobbed. I collapsed down onto the floor.

  This was a haunting, I thought. He wasn’t real. I’d moved into someone’s home and now they wanted me out. I had to tell someone.

  Outside, all was silent.

  I’d tell John and Violet the following day, I thought.

  THE WINDOW

  John and Violet were out. I knocked hard for a good half hour but no one answered. There was no smell of cooking that day. I took another day off at the butchers; I was still shaken, and so I decided to walk for a bit to clear my head.

  That morning I’d noticed the bruises on my neck, deep purple and quickly blackening. I wrapped a scarf around my neck to cover them up. His hands had been forceful, and I couldn’t help but think of why He didn’t kill me there and then. I mean, He tried to drown me, whoever He was. I’d concluded that He must be a ghost. It was clear, there was no other way. I’d always believed in the paranormal, the supernatural. I remember sitting down at the picture house and watching Rosemary’s Baby a few years earlier, how it terrified my dreams, but also how it made me think of the other side. When my dad died I thought I felt him, days later, sitting with me after my mam left.

  Perhaps it was all in my mind, the stuff with my dad. It was never a physical presence.

  Not like Him.

  The walk around the village of Stoney Grange was a nice one. The air was beautiful and cool and smelled fresh. I saw the coal vans doing their rounds, loading the coal into the back yards. I could smell the coal, but it smelled different, inviting. Perhaps the air was cleaner that day.

  I walked down to Stone Row and wandered around the shops. I picked up some shampoo and some kitchen cleaner, then walked down to the park and sat for a while. The park was rarely used; even the children grew tiresome of it. A few swings and a slide had been built, but it was mainly made to make use of space. It was probably a money thing. Land came in expensive if it wasn’t miners land.

  I sat on a seat down by the woods. I couldn’t keep my hands away from my neck. He had left His mark, like a branding of the skin.

  Children wandered about the woods behind me; I heard their taunts. They couldn’t have been any older than fourteen, fifteen perhaps. They stood in the trees, shouting insults at the back of my head. I ignored it and moved, despite not wanting to. That was the thing, they couldn’t harm me physically, but their mouths had a way with words that many adults didn’t even have. Foul mouths. Dirty. I was raised different; the boarding school still had their bullies, but they weren’t as fierce.

  I didn’t get bullied in school. My dad made sure I didn’t. Money talks, he’d said once. I remember that more than anything else he’d ever said to me. My mam wasn’t much
of a talker, neither.

  I walked back up the front of Stone Row, past the phone box and the corner shop, then onto Eden Row, Fife Row, Little Row, and then onto the Rotten Row. My street was noticeably dirtier, though the village wasn’t too keen on cleanliness to begin with. I thought about how thriving a community Stoney Grange once much have been, like in the films, neighbours borrowing butter and children playing in the street, all calmly. Not like how it had become. Cold and slate-grey, absent of life.

  The children had followed me home; I heard them behind me, their pace quickening, laughs loud. I sped up a little.

  Where does she live?

  What she got on ‘er?

  They came behind me fast.

  Whack, get ‘er down.

  They’d hit the back of my legs. I heard a crack somewhere behind my knee, but it didn’t take me down.

  They couldn’t harm me physically.

  “Bastards!” I shouted. “Get away!”

  They laughed. Four of them circled me.

  “Where you live, then?”

  “We’ll smash your windows in,” one said. “Come on, show us!”

  I tried to brush them off and kept walking. They didn’t ask me for money, they didn’t mug me. I walked fast, almost running. No one opened their doors. No one helped. This was the Rotten Row, after all.

  I got to my door on the corner and slid in the key, my fingers trembling.

  “What a posh girl!”

  “Nice house, little cunt.”

  I ran inside, almost snapping the key off the lock. One of them put his foot in the door as I slammed it. He screamed. The others just laughed.

  I locked the door behind me. My hair was a mess. My knee throbbed a little, but it wasn’t bad. I shut the curtains but they were still there.

  Put ‘er window in.

  Go on!

  The smash came next.

  The window came in loud. Glass shattered. I screamed. A red brick lay on the floor and I threw it back out at them. They laughed it off and threw it back in.

  “Come on then, bastards!”