The Man in Black: A Ghost Story Read online

  I felt rage. I unlocked the door and went on out. I grabbed the first one I could by the scruff of the hair, picking him up and shoving him against the wall. The others got aggressive, but backed away. I let the boy go and threw him down to the ground.

  “Stay away, or I’ll get the police.”

  Go on then, get them, dare you.

  “Off with ya!”

  They ran off, taunting and laughing as they disappeared down beyond the valley.

  I cleared up the glass and locked the front door. I had no one to turn to, and so I went upstairs to John and Violet.

  They were in this time. I knocked and John answered.

  “Aye, you alright?”

  “Not really, John, some little lads just put my window in downstairs.”

  “Really?” He seemed shocked.

  “Aye.”

  Violet appeared behind him having heard what I said.

  “You alright, petal?” she asked, hands clasped together at her chest.

  “I am.”

  “John, ‘av we got any glass left?”

  John turned to her and thought hard.

  “Aye, I think we do.”

  He took me downstairs and around the side of the yard to his shed. He opened it and brought out a large pane of glass.

  “Might be old, lass, but ‘av still got it.”

  That same day, John tidied up my broken window and replaced the glass. Violet came out to watch in her big coat, handing out cup after cup of tea.

  “Get in an’ stay warm, you,” Violet said. “Don’t worry about them little bastard kids, I know them, they’ll be sorted out.”

  There was pure anger in her voice, an anger I’d never seen in her before then.

  “They won’t come round again, that I can promise,” said John.

  It was getting late, and so I didn’t keep them out too long. Violet gave me a hug and John gave me a wink, then they headed on upstairs. I tried to slip John some notes but he wouldn’t take anything. An honest man, John was.

  I looked out across the valley one last time before I headed in.

  The woman was there, a silhouette against the horizon. She seemed so alike to Him, yet she didn’t at the same time. She stood the same.

  Still.

  Brooding.

  I didn’t worry myself. I went on inside, locking the door and blackening out the world with the draw of the curtains.

  If she’d watch me, I’d let her.

  Perhaps the children would be out.

  They’d get her.

  THE WIDOW

  The knock came early in the morning that next Saturday. I saw her eyes first, peering beadily through the front window, eyes of the purest green, glossy and dilated. I’d seen that sort of look before, the one He gave me that one Sunday on the second weekend. Her hand rapped on the window, and then on the front door. I was hesitant. Was this the same woman who’d watch me? The one who’d stand out in the cold all night long, waiting for me to approach her?

  The one who seemed so alike to Him, yet not at the same time?

  I went to the front door and opened it.

  The wind outside was audible unlike the days that passed. The woman stared blankly, her long, wet flaxen hair blowing in the breeze. I looked down at her boots. They were muddy, her feet small and undoubtedly the ones I’d seen left tread in the snow. She was closer to me than I thought, but why now?

  “Can I help?” I asked.

  The woman just looked at me, peering behind my shoulder every so often. She seemed fixated on something. Her lips moved slightly, but the cold kept them sealed, all chapped and dry.

  “Can I come in?” she mumbled, her lips pulling into her mouth. A tear fell from her eye, and I could see she was about to fall apart.

  “Aye, come in,” I signaled.

  “Cheers.”

  “You alright?” I asked, turning to look at her over my shoulder as she walked in.

  “Am fine,” she said, and wiped the tears from her eyes.

  I started to doubt myself. This was the woman who’d watch me. I knew it, deep down. She wore the same rags.

  No, it was.

  “Do you want a cuppa tea?”

  “Aye, please,” she said. “No sugar.”

  I didn’t have any.

  “Just have a seat at the table.”

  She shuffled onto a chair and took off her scarf and her gloves. I refilled the pot on the stove and put two cups in the sink to soak. I looked behind me and noticed her eyes again, darting all over the room, back and forth between the stove and the sitting room. She appeared dazed.

  “I’ll join you with that tea,” I said, trying to break her gaze.

  “That’s fine.”

  “So, you are the lass I see out every night? The one outside my window?”

  “I am, aye, but am here to clear it up for you, pet, not to frighten you.”

  I studied her face a little more in the light of the room. Yellow bags hung beneath her eyes and purple veins clustered around her nose. She stank of whisky and some kind of dampness.

  I made the tea and sat down, my attempts at small talk before that useless. I got a few nods here and there, nothing more. The woman would sigh occasionally.

  We sipped.

  “So, just thinking, you lived here before me? I thought of that last night,” I said. “It seems right to me.”

  “I did, aye.”

  “And you’re watching from outside?”

  “Aye, but am no danger to you, jus’ look at me.”

  She breathed into the steaming hot cup. I felt uneasy all of a sudden, despite her attempts at reassurance.

  “Do you live alone, then?” I asked.

  “I do now. You know, me an’ Albert had this house nice at one time.” She looked around at the walls, clenching her cup.

  “When did you live here?”

  “Just after the pit got shut down, just after me husband lost ‘is life.”

  “Sorry,” I said, softly.

  “Over there we ‘ad a nice big paintin’ of Loch Ness, we went there just once when we were much younger,” she said, nodding at the wall. I looked around, noticing the little holes in the walls for the first time where paintings once hung.

  She stopped talking and stared at me when I stopped and looked at the kitchen window.

  It was Him. He was back. I froze, unable to move my lips or my hands. I dropped my cup and it shattered across the tiles. The woman snapped.

  “Can you see ‘im, love?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Er, just standing, I - ”

  He cupped his hands around his face and peered inside. He was shaking, His face even older than it had been before. His face was black with dust and his clothes were black, too, filthy.

  I was ready to scream, ready to open my mouth if I could. I’d had enough. I wanted to strangle the woman sitting in front of me, hurt her for the times she’d watched me, for the times He shattered me. I trembled.

  “Don’t be afraid, as long as He knows am here then He won’t hurt you,” she said. “He won’t hurt you anymore, I promise, love.”

  The back door opened and He walked in, boots loud against the wood floor, blood pouring and halo of bright light.

  She looked at Him for only a second, then back at me. The door slammed behind Him with a gust of wind.

  “My name’s Mary, and this is my Albert,” she said, her eyes tearing up. “My husband, He is.”

  Or was.

  The Man in black pulled out a chair and sat, his breathing heavy and rhythmic. It was as if He was there only as part of a dream. I could see Him, but at the same time He barely was, like an object out the corner of my eye. Perhaps ghosts worked that way, only there if you really focused, otherwise they were nothing more than a flicker.

  I halfway hoped that it was all a dream or a joke of some sort, but Mary just sat with her tea and stared blankly at me, eyes wet.

  “That’s wh
ere He died, right over there.”

  She nodded at the place next to the stove. He looked over, too.

  “He was brought back ‘ere with lungs full of coal and dust, hardly able to breathe,” she said. “He didn’t last long.”

  I was silenced. I thought about what questions I could ask that were appropriate enough. What could I possibly ask her? Why He tried to drown me? Why He watched my every move? And why she, widow to Him, stood outside my house all night, every night?

  I dared not speak.

  “He worked down the pit, y’know?”

  She finished her cup and pulled out a flask. She unscrewed it and drank nearly half, scotch ripe on her tongue.

  “It collapsed and He barely got out, but y’know, He did, and He came straight home, straight back to me, His girl.”

  She pulled out a yellow packet and rolled up a cigarette. She offered me one, but I didn’t smoke. She made up two anyway and tucked the other behind her ear.

  “Sometimes the wind comes silent outside,” she said. “Have you noticed that?”

  “All the time,” I said, finally able to open my mouth now. The back of my throat was hoarse and dry and sounded like gravel.

  “But then a storm comes like the other night, and that’s when I feel Him. I see Him all the time, but not like you do. I can’t stand to see Him properly, that’s why you have to stay and not me.”

  She lit up. The smoke made its way across the table and hit His face.

  I saw him flinch. I saw Him as clear as I saw her in front of me.

  “Albert never bothered with names.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Albert. He never bothered naming the dog. I said we should, but He always had His way. He loved the little thing, though.”

  “The one that comes every Sunday?”

  Mary looked at me suddenly.

  “No, he’d come all the time,” she replied, then paused. “Albert died on a Sunday, y’know?”

  It suddenly all came together, as disjointed as it was.

  I’d heard stories before of dogs grieving over their masters. Although the little terrier didn’t have a master, perhaps Albert was kindest to him, and that’s what mattered the most.

  Every Sunday, without fail.

  Water first.

  “It’s a lovely little thing and you know it, so take the boy in for me, ey?”

  I slipped up a smile.

  “Alright,” I said.

  “Alright.”

  My anger had lowered.

  “Albert, this Man I’m seeing, when did you start seeing Him? Your husband?”

  “About a week after He left me, at the window, sun on ‘is face,” she said. “Blood everywhere, round his chin.”

  “Aye, I see it.”

  We both turned to Him. We both saw the same thing. Somehow, that was alright. I felt a little warmer.

  “If he tried to hurt you then it wasn’t His fault, He misses this place, I just know it.”

  “He did, I just don’t know what to do.”

  I felt the tears. How could I live in a place so close in the heart of someone else?

  “My dad died,” I said. “I have nowhere else to go, but you need this place.”

  “No, love, I don’t. He has no choice, this is His home, but now He’ll keep you under his roof as well.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  I just cried.

  She got up and walked around Him, then put her hand on mine. It felt cold, ice cold. She had the shakes, too. The drinking probably crept up after her husband’s death, I thought. You always hear stories like that.

  “You’ll be safe,” she whispered, close to my ear now. “He’ll look after you, because He looked after me, and that’s what He does.”

  I looked at Him. His eyes were full of tears, as if He wanted to reach out and touch His wife for one last time. Mary stepped back and walked over to the back door, looking back.

  “You need to keep a roof over your head, and this is the only place I can promise you’ll always be looked after. Stick it out, love, and you’ll see.”

  She closed the door.

  The Man in Black was gone. I saw him outside, standing close to the window. He left black soot on the chair, and the floor was wet with ice. He pulled a flat cap over his head and walked away, not turning back.

  “And if you ever see Albert again, don’t be scared. He knows am alright, and He won’t hurt you now. Not anymore.”

  She looked at the bruises on my neck.

  “That won’t happen no more.”

  I felt that somehow He had hurt her once, but I didn’t have the belly to come out with it. He’d hurt me, but that was before Mary came back, before His wife reassured Him of me, somehow.

  This was closure, I thought.

  “I’m sorry about your dad,” she said to me. “Did he work down the pit as well?”

  “No, he was just ill. My uncle Jim was injured down there, though.”

  “I’m sorry. Problem with this house is it’s right in front of it, right on the colliery. I can’t stay in a house with so many memories, love.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ll leave you, love,” Mary said, slipping her flask and her cigarettes back into her coat pocket. “Remember everything.”

  I smiled.

  “I’ll show you out,” I said. “Come on.”

  I walked her to the front door. I noticed the mud on the back of her coat, the grass stains on her trousers and the stains on her sleeve. I thought of asking her to sleep for the night, but I had nowhere for her. That, and she’d made it clear this wasn’t her place anymore. It was mine to settle into.

  “Get the place decorated, put some pictures up, it’ll do you good,” she said. “And that might keep the memories at bay. History is a funny’un.”

  “Thank you,” I said, still nervous and shaking.

  I was still scared, but somehow Mary had made things easier to cope with. I was stuck on the Rotten Row, but it wasn’t all bad. I had a roof over my head, haunted or not.

  Mary walked out into the snow, turned, smiled, then disappeared into the haze. I knew I’d never see her again.

  That was her final goodbye.

  Somehow, it felt right.

  The days that came after were silent. I never saw Him. Mary no longer wandered outside. Perhaps she’d found her place in the world, away from all the bad memories.

  I’d look out over the valley a lot. The remnants of the pit were bold, a deathly reminder. Brave men. Hardworking men. Some were gone, and some were forever restrained. They could never be replaced. I hoped that the rest of the pitmen found work outside of Stoney Grange, that they continued to provide for their wives and their children, for themselves.

  I hoped that Mary could move on someday, too. In heart, not in marriage.

  I thought about my dad a lot.

  There was one Saturday in the weeks that followed where I thought about my dad more than I ever had. I thought about Albert, how He’d came back, how He hadn’t truly passed over to the other side until He saw his wife one last time, until He knew His home would be taken care of. All of His anger and guilt had built, only to silence after one last goodbye. I wondered if my dad was the same. Had he visited me, too? Did he watch over me as I slept? Did he look after me even in death? I didn’t know, but I knew he passed on in peace, and that was what kept me together.

  Like people, spirits need their love and their reassurance, too.

  Until then they just wander, alone.

  I slept well that Saturday night. I’d make sure to work hard the next week and to spend what I had on brightening the flat up. I’d look after John and Violet upstairs, too. I’d look out for the little terrier, and I’d follow up on Mary and her wishes.

  I looked forward to what the future had in store.

  I looked forward to life.

  THE MAN IN BLACK

  I saw the dog the following day, nose in his bowl come the usual time. I’d seen John and Violet th
at same afternoon, putting out the grub alongside a small dish of water.

  I’d slept better. The wind howled outside, an epitome of rage. The snow had stopped and it rained instead, washing the dirty white away, making room for a new Spring. Sunlight shone through the soot on the windows, though more brown than bright. The dog had finished his dinner by the time I went to the kitchen and finished off my cup of coffee. He sat in the rain, ears down. I looked out at him, his saddened eyes swollen and lost-looking.

  I was wearing my underwear and not much else, but I went outside anyway.

  The rain hit me harder than I thought it would, attacking my hair first. It poured down my face as I kneeled down with the dog. I pulled the wet hair away from my cheeks as I petted the animal, pulling myself close to him as if to bear all the warmth I had to give.

  He cried a little at first, but I got him to follow me to the alley. I remembered how he’d sometimes just sit and stare at the house like it was some home he’d always wanted. Of course, it had been. It had always been his home. It’d be his home again. I sat with him in the alleyway, then on the step, and then finally inside of the back door. He seemed hesitant to the idea of coming in, but once I’d opened a packet of biscuits, he sniffed and gave in.

  The first thing he did was settle down by the stove. He limped around before that, but I thought it best not to inspect his wounds until after. His tail rarely wagged.

  I thought about Mary and how she said they never could think up a name for him. Albert never bothered with names, she said, but I knew exactly what I wanted to call him. Somewhere in my mind, even from the first time I saw him with John and Violet, I knew his name.

  I went to one of the cardboard boxes in the kitchen that I never did get to unpack and rummaged around for it. I nearly didn’t find it; it was always easy to misplace. After some searching I felt it beneath the papers and the ornaments I’d kept as mementos. It was a little twisted, but its colour hadn’t faded. I washed it in the sink then set it aside for the dog. He had rested enough, and when I came back his tail perked up and his head tilted. I thought I saw a smile.

  I picked him up gently, cradling him in my arms. The water in the sink was warm and lovely, and so I washed him. His wounds weren’t as deep as I’d first thought, but I cleaned and dried them, wrapping them up tight. From dinner I put some leftovers on a plate and put it down by the stove. I made a bed for him from some blankets then settled him in, tucking them around his skinny body. His ribs were sharp, but I’d soon fatten him up. I didn’t know what to do about the limp. I thought that with enough rest and attention it’d ease off. I’d go into Durham sometime during the week, I thought, to get him a bed and some other essentials.