David Leadbeater

Walking With Ghosts

This one’s for the best green-blooded crew that ever graced Mcarthur Glen… you know who you are.

PART 1

Josie Leigh didn’t know it, but she was about to start the longest shift of her life.

Before she left the house she cracked the curtains a bit and gulped down the rest of her coffee. Outside the sky was awash with silver, and the house roofs glimmered and glittered underneath a full moon. The extra light would help her tonight.

A car pulled up, brake-lights flashing red briefly.

Joe Morris. She smiled. Her aging partner was a good old salt, determined to see out his last few months on the job by helping Josie become the best kind of police officer she could be. In six months he’d taught her more than she’d learned in two years of training.

She placed the empty mug carefully on a coaster and sent a last loving glance all the way upstairs and around the corner of the upstairs hallway, right into her daughter’s cosy bed. It had taken a lot for Josie to leave Emily with her partner of two years, Simon, but he had proven his love for Josie’s daughter time and again, and the love was starting to be reciprocated.

Outside, the brisk wind hit her like a blade. She hurried to the car. “Cold as hell,” she said as she tugged at the seat-belt.

Joe Morris took a moment to stare at her. “You stay up all night thinking up these silly statements, Josie?”

She shrugged and grinned, knowing he was teasing. “All work and no play makes Jack… you know.” Joe hated horror movies, so Josie considered it her duty to constantly remind him of them.

“Whatever,” he nodded towards the computer mounted on the police car’s dash. “Clock in, Constable Leigh. Time to walk the beat.”

* * *

The centre of the city of York was quiet. Josie walked beside Joe Morris and stopped to watch the mist billowing along the Shambles, York’s best known medieval street. They were used to seeing tourists thronging this area; it was a camera interaction magnet, but to see the entirety of the roughly cobbled street and hear the faint squeaking of the swaying shop-signs sent a slight chill through Josie. They heard a dog barking, far-away, almost as if it resided in another dimension, and even a street away some late-night revellers laughed and joked loudly, but a cloak of shadowy silence hung here, and the slow eddy of time drifted past them like the plodding march of a long-dead army.

“Spooky.” Even seen-it-all police officer Morris shivered.

Josie listened to the groaning stillness. “Nothing going on here, Inspector,” she said. “Umm, shall we move on?”

The formality jolted Morris out of his fugue. “Of course.”

A quick left and a brisk walk brought them out near the Minster, one of the largest churches of its kind in Northern Europe, and boasting a famous Rose Window. Thousands of visitors every year were attracted to York’s Gothic cathedral, but 4 a.m. caught the fancy of nothing but the gloom and the darkness.

“1–2 — Freddie’s coming for you…” Josie shivered despite her own attempt at a joke. Nightmare on Elm Street was not the movie to be quoting right now.

“This is one of those nights,” Joe Morris said. “when nothing happens.” He looked around, taking in the ethereal calm like the seasoned pro he was. “Been here before, Josie. It’s gonna be one long, boring bitch of a shift.”

Josie took a moment to adjust her gear, her belt, her too-tight trousers, anything to deliberately avoid her mentor’s eyes. “You ever seen anything… umm… odd? Truthfully? York is the most haunted city in the world, you know. They say if you take a tape recorder to a place that’s supposed to be haunted and press record, and then take it home and play it back on full volume, you will hear voices that aren’t supposed to be there.”

Joe Morris scratched an eyebrow. “I know all that,” he paused. “And you say you want the truth, Josie, from a friend? Well, I’ll say this: at night around here I’ve learned all bets are off. But if you want it in real talk, Constable, from your Inspector? Then I’d say ‘get a bloody move on, Leigh, and stop wasting our damn time.”

And Josie moved off, following the pavement towards Stonegate, her senses tingling with unease. Joe was getting so close to retirement now he often said he could feel it tightening around his shoulders like the links of heavy chain. His wife had died three years ago; the kids long since, too, had flown and nested elsewhere. The job was, sadly, all he had left.

At Stonegate they paused outside the silent coffee shop on the corner, and looked both ways down the cobbled intersection. Joe shrugged at her. “You choose.”

She pointed to the right, not knowing she had just made the worst decision of her life.

* * *

“You gotta read ‘em,” Joe was saying, taking every opportunity to impart his knowledge to his recruit. “Not just the shifty eyes or the damn body language. You gotta learn the art. You can tell a lot by the way a man dresses, by the watch he wears or doesn’t, by the way he responds to a mention of kids or family, or Christmas. It’s all there, right in that reaction.”

Josie thought about her six-year-old, Emily, with her emotions as transparent as summer rain, standing innocent and rational in the clearest light, and said: “What makes a man the man he becomes, Joe? Do you know that?”

“Nurture,” he said in a low voice. “I’ve seen a man in all his states, Josie and, believe me, nature’s got nothin’ to do with it.”

They plodded on through the still night, checking out the blank windows and darkened shop interiors, and the only noise was the noise of their passing.

Abruptly, shockingly, there was a scream. Josie had never heard anything like it. At first she froze, unable to make the connection between the calm night and the terror conveyed by that single, terrible wail. But then Joe snapped straight and began to run. Josie raced after him on legs made rubbery by fear, her gear bouncing around on her vest and belt.

“What the hell?” Joe was talking, talking fast to himself as if he needed the reassurance. Josie didn’t have time to ask as he skidded to a halt and studied the shadows to his left.

“It came from Swinegate?” Josie panted.

“How’d you know?”

Joe didn’t even need to shrug. The answer was obvious. Been here before…

But Josie wondered if he ever had been here before. They took off down Swinegate, past Kennedy’s Wine bar where she met and fancied Simon on the first date, and stopped at the blind corner.

Now, to their right, was a darkened courtyard. “You couldn’t have known, Joe,” Josie now said with a shudder. “You’ve heard this before, right?”

“Twice,” he said. “Same scream. Same place.”

“Have you, umm, every seen…”

“No.”

“Has anyone?”

Joe made no reply. The silence made the hairs on the back of Josie’s neck stand on end.

“There’s a story,” Joe was whispering, as if afraid he might wake something up, “that tells of an orphanage that stood around here in the eighteenth century. There were murders, terrible rituals. A greedy man fed the poor kids very little, and gave them no medicine, so they frequently died. He didn’t dispose of the bodies, but left them to fester and rot. Then, on one foggy night just like this he thought he heard their screams, the screams of the tormented dead, so he killed all the remaining children in fits of fury. When the authorities found him, wandering the streets covered in blood, they took him to Bootham Asylum, a place then regarded as truly haunted.”

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?”

“Scared me ball-less, Sir. I was on my arse, babbling, whilst Joe was dying.”

“No. I don’t believe that, and if you look deep down, neither do you.”

“I guess not. I tried to help him.”

“You did help. You made sure the last thing he saw in this world was someone who really cares about him. We should all be so lucky.”

“Joe said that girl’s scream signifies that something terrible is about to happen.”

“I heard her once. My father died the same night.”

Josie closed her eyes and tried a quiet laugh that came out as a strangled sob. “So, I guess I’m the lucky one, hearing her twice.”

Kett suddenly pushed himself forward. “Wait. Twice?”

“Yes, Sir. The second time right after I though Joe had died, for the first time.”

“Christ, Leigh. If you’re right, that means this ain’t done yet. Something else is going to happen today…”

* * *

Josie surfaced from Kett’s stifling office near nine in the morning. Christ, her shift was technically only half way through, and it had already changed her life. Technically, because Kett had just ordered her to take a few days off, to come back fresh after Joe’s funeral.

It was the right thing, and something she needed to do.

The squad room was running as competently as ever, but with a subdued air. There were no good-humoured cracks, no harmless, bawdy comments. Dust motes spun listlessly through heavy air drained of brightness and laughter, and now coloured dull grey instead of red and gold.

Colleagues caught her eye, a few nodded. She made her way to her desk and sat down heavily.

Sunday morning, nine-o-clock. The one person who could lift her spirits would still be in bed, dreaming a bunch of lovely, untainted dreams. No matter. Josie needed her anchor, her innocent muse. She tapped speed-dial one and waited with her head down.

“Mum?” The voice was stifled with sleep.

“Hi, darling.” Josie could barely speak.

There was a rustle of covers and pyjamas and toys and, most likely, a torch. “Mum?”

Emily’s youthful concern shook Josie into lucidity. “Just thought I’d let you know, Em, I’ll be home early today. Soon.”

Her six-year-old practically squealed, in the way of children going from lethargy to fully alert at the speed of sound. “Now?”

“Soon, darling, soon. Tell Simon to make blueberry waffles for ten.” She needed them.

More squeals and a sudden hang up, and Josie found her lips had curled up into a smile. She placed the phone gently back into its cradle, lost in thoughts of Emily and Joe and the unpredictability of life when a large shadow fell across her desk.

“Leigh.”

It was Paul Kett and he was drip-white, as if he’d spent the last night walking with ghosts.

Josie felt a dreadful sense of foreboding…

… and remembered Joe’s words: she only screams when something terrible is going to happen.

… as Kett spoke words no sane person should ever have to hear.

“A six-year-old girl was just abducted from Coney Street. It’s him, Leigh. He just took another kid from under our Goddamn noses.”

PART 3

The girl’s name was Kayleigh Bryant. She was six. Emily’s age. Before she realised what she was doing, Josie was already dipping a toe into those dreadful waters, wondering, suffocating, delving deeper and deeper, until she no longer had to wonder, and deliberately dragged herself back to reality before fear for her safe Emily debilitated her.

“I’m staying,” she said to Kett’s back. “I can’t go home.”

“You’re no good now, Leigh.”

“I will be, Sir. My… my daughter’s six.” She met his eyes as he spun around. “I can do this. I want to.”

“Fine. Listen!” His calm, raised voice quieted the station. “CID will be here soon. This little girl must be found. That’s all.”

Josie felt a bloom of respect. With that economical sentence Paul Kett had just delivered a blunt order, in disguise, to everyone to bypass their rivalries and get their jobs done fast. He’d reminded them of the stakes and delivered it all with a modicum of respect.

He gave her one more moment. “Joe will have to wait a while, Leigh. I’m sure he’ll understand.”

* * *

The centre of York on a Sunday afternoon bore no relation to the York where Joe Morris met his snarling death. Tourists and locals thronged the streets in a mismatched muddle of the purposeful and the pointless. Josie fought her way through the masses to get to the latest crime scene, this one on Low Petergate, just past a French Cafe. She was a spare on this, and thus forced to go it alone. Her quick calls to Emily and Simon were the polar opposites- to the first all apologetic and angry, to the second all fury and understated desperation.

Cops were everywhere. Josie knew about a third of them, the rest regarded her appearance with everything from mild disinterest to outright suspicion. She quickly got among them, deciding the best foot forward was the one that joined the fray.

She found herself on the edge of a group of policeman, and at their centre stood the distraught parents.

Josie came to a thundering stop, a tangle of emotions suddenly confusing her feet. The mother was hysterical, hanging on both to her husband and a big policeman. A WPC was trying to coax her away from the scene and, most likely, to a waiting ambulance. The father was just standing there, shell-shocked, as if all the worlds and dreams he’d ever built has come smashing down around him.

The expression on both their faces broke Josie’s heart. It screamed the single word: please! The fear they radiated was a manifestation of the unspoken fear every parent in every corner of the world would always secretly harbour.

Please find our daughter… please bring her back to us.

Little Kayleigh Bryant, their daughter, was a black-haired six-year-old with a scrunched up nose and a happy-go-lucky nature. She’d been hiding from her dad in a clothes’ shop when the man had grabbed her. She’d been wearing a royal-blue dress with frills and pictures of Princesses on the front and had been carrying her little red blanket, the comforter that never left her side.

Josie had to look away from the distraught parents. She found herself face to face with another new recruit, Stuart Anders, a tall gangly youth with a face like a horse, and teeth to match. “Jesus, Josie,” he said under his breath, “there’s a hundred cops here, it seems, with nothing to do.”

“What happened? Do we even know which way he took her?”

Anders nodded to a mobile van blocking half the street. “They’re checking surveillance right now. Trouble is,” he made a motion with his head that included all the cops and the Sunday shopping crowd. “easy to get lost.”

Josie checked her watch. Noon. “That’s two hours already,” she said. “Christ, it all seems so slow when you want stuff to happen.”

Anders pointed as a second van’s doors were flung wide and six cops jumped out, followed by some civilians. The cops were waving A4 sheets as if in triumph.

Josie knew what that meant.

“Eye-witness sketch,” Anders now looked a bit brighter. In such depression even the merest token is inspirational.

Josie waited until her turn came for the handout. The composite was grainy, showing a blonde-haired man with bushy eyebrows, long straggly hair and a hook nose. Dark eyes. But probably his most outstanding feature was his spade-like chin. He’d been wearing a blue jacket and jeans, and carrying a rucksack.

“Well,” Anders said. “He can’t shave that off.”

She glanced away from Anders then and looked both ways along the street. She stopped when, at the limit of her eye-line, she thought she saw something glimmer from the roof of a building.

“What’s…?“

Anders swung round. “Eh?”

Josie clammed up, only too aware of all that had happened since the start of her shift. “Nothing,” she said, and she drifted slowly away from the new constable. After a minute she mingled with the flow of pedestrians without every taking her eyes away from the spot where she had seen the glimmer.

She now found herself back at the corner of Stonegate, beside the tiny Starbucks. The staff inside were beavering away, but the long queue had begun to snake out the door. To Josie’s right was a short street that led to York Minster. When she looked up at the place her mind had marked she saw nothing. Just an old roof.

And tiles. Cast stonework. Dirty iron guttering.

Damn. Her imagination was firing on all the wrong cylinders. She was about to look away when she saw something she couldn’t believe. It was there, before her eyes, but she couldn’t process it.

There was something else on the roof. An old stone gargoyle. There were a lot of these scattered around the roofs of York for one reason or another, a veritable chain of the grotesque. This one was pocked and stained and ugly, but there was a shadow writhing around its head like a demonic halo.

Josie stared hard.

And when she did so she heard the whispering. A sibilant murmur, like a woman who whispers into the ear of her lover late, late at night. She blinked and shook her head, but the noise continued, never above an undertone, but constant, unfaltering. It was as if the gargoyle was talking to her, a demon bending the ear of a willing supplicant.

The whisper shot off like a leaf caught by a harsh gust of wind. Josie eyes were drawn in that direction and fixed upon a second glimmering, another knot of darkness that all but beckoned her with long, twisted fingers.

She moved immediately, before the phenomenon could disappear. In a moment she was staring up at a second gargoyle, this one in the shape of winged serpent with long, jagged teeth. The whispering roiled around her head and a thought hit her. Did these ancient gargoyles have some kind of sentience? Perhaps they listened, silent statues surveying humanity and all its magnificent quirks.

Perhaps, in the bright light of day, the ghosts still chattered and lurked and watched, biding their time, awaiting their moment.

Now the whisper flew off again. Josie followed it past the St Michael Le Belfry church and close to the Minster. The Gothic cathedral now reared up in all its majesty, overseeing all, and drawing every eye — even locals — as they walked by. The Minster was graced with many a gargoyle, some old and some new, and Josie saw two more glimmerings before she found herself in another inner courtyard similar to the one Joe and she encountered the previous night. So far the whisperings had moved her from light and noise into darkness and solitude despite the Sunday frenzy that surrounded her.

She exited the courtyard, her mind still buzzing, and found herself facing the Treasurer’s House, the site of the best known ghost story in one of the best known ghost story cities in the world.

The Legionnaires.

Josie turned away, but felt her glance drawn back there. Later, the voices promised her.

She turned away again, and came face to face with Kayleigh Bryant’s abductor.

* * *

He was walking briskly around the corner. She made eye contact with him, saw the immense shovel chin. His face fell, his nose flared and he started to run like a hunted dog. Josie didn’t hesitate for a second but gave chase whilst fumbling for her radio, baton, and Taser all at the same time.

“Stop!” Oh, for the intervention of a heroic bystander. That’s all it would take; all it would take to help save a little girl’s life and catch a grave-digging monster.

The man dropped a carrier bag. Josie noted snacks and Pepsi and fruit tumbling out along the tarmac, all items that would help to keep a young victim quiet. She pounded the pavement, screaming into her radio, determined to keep this bastard in sight even if her heart burst.

Shop facades flew by in a blur. Pedestrians stood and stared. One old guy looked like he might consider tackling the fleeing man, but when he moved in closer the look on the old man’s face suddenly turned to abject fear. Josie sped past him a second later, getting closer.

They ran under the castle walls at Monkgate Bar. A car slewed in front of Josie, narrowly missing her, but she vaulted its bonnet and hit the ground faster than ever. Her quarry turned a sharp corner and was momentarily lost from sight, but then she saw flashes of his clothing as he climbed a nearby stone staircase.

Damn, the bastard was heading for the castle walls. The medieval walls almost completely encircled York, and still spanned the entry gates into the city- called bars. Josie raced up the time-worn steps in pursuit.

“Stop!” She knew he wouldn’t. He was fast, already a good thirty feet in front of her, but he was coming up to a group of tourists. Josie steeled herself and pounded on. Her radio crackled at her belt but she couldn’t lose focus by answering it.

“Look out!” she cried just as he ran into the tourists, anything to cause a distraction. An old woman fell against the castle walls, banging her head. A young couple toppled off the inside ledge and went rolling onto the soft grass a few feet below.

Josie heard sirens behind her, splitting the day in half. Yes!

The man must have heard them too, for he turned around as if surveying his options. In that moment, Josie redoubled her efforts and came to within six feet of him. Then, unbelievably, he clambered atop the castle walls themselves. Josie dived for his legs, sure he would never jump. The drop on the other side had to be thirty feet or more.

Her outstretched fingers brushed his cement-stained trainers as he leapt into space. Josie’s headlong dive sent her crashing into the stone wall, grazing her face and ripping a nasty cut above her right eye. She was up in a second though, and clambering atop the walls herself.

She saw him far below, rolling as he landed, rolling, rolling down the rest of the hill.

Miraculously unhurt. If there was a God, she thought, this bastard should have just broken everything except his neck.

Josie looked at the hand that had brushed his clothing. It was covered in some kind of orange residue. She ignored it and eyed the drop. Her target scrambled and crawled and dragged himself to his feet and shot off without even a glance back. He was heading for the huddle of private and student buildings opposite. In there they would lose him.

Josie thought of Emily and hesitated, but riding on the back of that came an image of little Kayleigh Bryant, dressing that morning in her frilly blue dress, the one she loved with the Princesses on it, and of how she might now be sobbing and clutching that red comforter blanket.

Josie leapt into space. The drop was far worse than she had imagined. The green grass rushed up at her, but never seemed to get there. She willed it up faster, heart racing, braced for the impact. When it came, Josie bent her legs and rolled. As she turned over a slice of sharp pain travelled from her right ankle to her knee. She cried out, came to a stop, and paused for a moment, panting breathlessly.

On her knees, she peered from under a bedraggled fringe. Kayleigh Bryant’s abductor had scuttled heedlessly across the road and was even now vaulting a low wall into someone’s backyard. Josie could see the flashing blue lights coming around the corner; she could see the policemen inside the cars, craning their necks in search of the assailant. They were close, very close.

Close… but too late.

PART 4

The light began to fade, the western skies quickly becoming a patchwork curtain of purple and orange and gold. The tone inside the makeshift HQ had grown decidedly more sombre these last few hours. Josie’s sighting and chase had given the whole team a morale boost, but any further sightings had dampened their spirits like a downpour snuffs out a burning candle.

Josie’s ankle had been strapped. Now she could move, with difficulty, but she could walk, and that’s all she needed. Her shift had technically ended hours ago, but there was no way she was going home. No way anyone was going home.

This thing would end on their shift, no matter when that ending would be.

She hobbled out and into the darkening day. On instinct she glanced up at the nearby roofs, wondering.

The gargoyles gazed back impassively at her, their stony faces full of hate and accusation.

But she’d tried, dammit. She felt her own need to give something back weighing like a dead man’s noose around her shoulders. Luck and happenstance had bested her, not lack of will or desire or a poor effort.

She felt the night enshroud her. Darkness weaved its spell and began to alter the perceptions in her brain. Instead of thinking like a cop, like an investigator, she studied the places where shadow met shadow, letting her vision pour into the inky blackness.

Were the omnipresent ghosts chattering at her now, leading her on?

With nothing left to lose Josie walked wilfully into their embrace. Her gaze strayed upwards again, but if there was a darkness above the gargoyles’ heads tonight it was lost in shadow.

But there was no mistaking the red glints in their eyes.

Again, they led her on. Along Low Petergate. Each step made the dread churn in her stomach. Each step invited the blackness to her even more until she felt as if light had never existed in this world. There was a feeling in the air, a foreboding, that something unspeakable was happening tonight, and Josie felt the hairs on the back of her neck rising again.

At Goodramgate she was guided to her left, past the old White Swan pub. Noise and merriment drifted from the open doors and windows, but failed to penetrate Josie’s ethereal cocoon. Goodramgate opened out at the end into a normally busy intersection. But tonight, perhaps it was just because it was Sunday, or maybe because everyone had heard the horrific news about Kayleigh Bryant, the streets were deserted. Even the nearby Italian and Indian restaurants were subdued and sparsely populated.

Josie looked ahead and felt a prickle of fear as a thin, ethereal mist began to drift across the floor. The back of the Minster was to her left, College Street ahead. Her eyes were drawn to the one place they shied away from, the one place she instinctively knew she was being manoeuvred towards.

The Treasurer’s House.

The site of York’s biggest and scariest ghost story. This was where the Legionnaires walked.

Josie stopped and took a breath. She rubbed her nose and face as if trying to make sure she was still real. And then she heard a horn, desolate in the distance, like the last, dying horn sounded on the last blood-soaked battlefield.

A pale light glimmered across the buildings ahead. The fog drifted across it in patchwork glimmers of white and grey. Somewhere an old gate groaned as it swung back and forth on rusted hinges. Josie stared, her whole body clenched in shock as the entire wall in front of her started to flicker and fade away. What appeared was a huge carthorse, ridden by a tired-looking Roman soldier. The horse pounded the ground with great hooves, but silence overwhelmed everything, as if the night had been robbed of its voice.

Josie’s legs buckled so that she fell to her knees. She noted that when the horses’ hooves hit the ground they disappeared into it, as if treading an old, long-buried road.

Behind them came more soldiers, all on foot, walking as if on their knees. Each one appeared untidy and dejected. Josie remembered that this entire legion was rumoured to be lost, destined to walk unknown paths for eternity.

They cut diagonally across her, bearing her no heed, but for the courtesy of not acknowledging her. Josie steeled herself, ready to tackle this new landscape of ghosts, for in her heart, in her very being, she believed it might help Kayleigh Bryant.

The legion trudged past her in silence, and Josie followed. Around the corner they plodded and onto Monkgate, heading for the old Monkgate Bar, the gates of the castle. Josie held her breath as a young couple crab-walked around the corner, locked in each other’s arms, mouths and tongues squashed together and hands wandering the uncovered curves of each other’s bodies, and passed right through the lead soldier.

The boy pulled away, gasping. “What the h-“

The girl concentrated on righting her skirt and blouse. “Man! Did you feel that?”

“Yeah. Felt like I’d been dipped in ice.”

“My legs are friggin’ freezing!”

Josie watched as the girl tried to cover her legs with the ridiculously short skirt. She would have laughed out loud if the whole situation hadn’t been so utterly bizarre. What the two lovebirds couldn’t see was that there was an entire Roman legion stomping the cobbles of an old Roman road literally in front of their noses.

Then the two saw Josie and froze. A look of horror crossed their faces as they saw the WPC. They turned and ran as if pursued by ghosts.

Josie shook her head and continued her own ghost walk, following in wraithlike footsteps. The legion swayed from side-to-side as it walked, tunics hanging loose, helmets and plumes shabby.

Josie couldn’t speak, could hardly breathe, as the legion crossed the wide road, Lord Mayor’s Walk, with traffic coursing slowly and sparsely along it. Cars broke down, just drifting to a stop, their owners left blinking and bemused behind the wheel. But there was no damage other than a couple of minor collisions.

The legion marched on, threading a route through the neighbourhood where Josie had last seen the child abductor crawling through earlier that day. The further she went from the city, the dirtier the streets and windows became. A lone, straggling soldier had begun to keep pace with her, maybe by chance, maybe for morale support. He never looked her way, but his every archaic step matched hers.

Occasionally they interacted with pedestrians, with the same result as she had seen before. People scared and backing away, storing their experiences for tomorrow when no-one would believe them and they most likely wouldn’t even believe themselves.

At last the legion ground to a halt. Josie stood expectantly. In front, the carthorse and its rider were prancing before a row of houses that looked like they had been turned into individual bedsits, either for student accommodation or for local workers.

Josie moved up through the column, feeling no fear, and came to a stop in an empty street before a row of dingy, two-storey flats. The lone solder had kept pace with her and now began to diminish, like a flickering candle burning down its wick and sputtering into oblivion. When she turned around the entire legion had vanished, leaving her stunned, and afraid and very much alone.

Josie glanced up at the endless rows of windows. Some were still lit, most were dark and covered. She felt besieged with an overwhelming guilt, beset with the need to make a judgement.

She was here for a reason. Her heart pounded and her palms were slick with sweat. After a moment, a flicker of common sense returned and she took a few steps back until she was able to see every window at once. Deep down, her desperate urge to help, and in particular her close-to-home need to help Kayleigh Bryant, tore at her heart like a vampire would bite and tear at a helpless slayer.

The windows gave nothing back. They were the eyes to two dozen vacant souls.

There were no gargoyles perched on this building. The flickering mist rose around her knees, sometimes so dense she could practically tear it apart. Music drifted through a nearby pane of glass, shouting through another. Now that her eyes had become more accustomed to the darker area she made out various cracks in many curtains.

What was she supposed to do? Peer through every nook and cranny?

If I have to-

And her heart began to hammer so fast it almost came bouncing through her chest, for there, right there, in a second-floor window was a bunched-up tangle of material.

A blanket. A red blanket.

Yes, it could be anyone’s red blanket, but Josie just knew that six-year-old Kayleigh Bryant had shown amazing strength and intelligence by separating herself from her precious comforter and stuffing it where someone might notice. The Legionnaires proved it further.

Kayleigh Bryant was in this flat.

Josie marked the location and ran. She ran as if pursued by the Devil himself. She ran for the life of a six-year-old girl and for the lives of her parents. She ran for love of her own daughter, Emily.

She ran.

The radio crackled and she breathed out her location, entered the building and raced for the steps. Two at a time. Quick double-back at the top. Pinpoint the door. Slow down outside and take a deep breath.

She knew she couldn’t wait for back-up. Couldn’t afford to. Her Taser readied, Josie knocked on the door and put her ear to the lock.

Heard a shuffle from inside. Maybe the bastard had ordered Pizza. In any case footsteps came towards the door, making Josie back off a little.

“Who is it?” A surprised voice. Damn.

Which way to go? British Gas? Landlord? Free stuff? The thoughts ricocheted around her brain in a split second. Only one way to go.

“We’ve just opened a new take-away on Penley’s Grove Street, Sir. We’re giving away free pizza for tonight only.”

One second later the door opened. Josie got a quick look at him, glimpsed the shovel chin and kicked hard at the door. She fell inside, banging her knees, but the guy continued to back away even inside his own apartment. Typical behaviour for demons that preyed on children. As he shuffled and shambled away a cloud of orange dust again rose from his filthy trainers and jeans.

Josie held her Taser out like a gun. Close now, outside, was the sound of many sirens. They had the bastard. She cast a glance around the flat.

Single room. Couch bed in one corner, makeshift kitchen in another. Television and xbox. A horrifically suggestive set of used shovels set under the window.

Used.

There was no sign of Kayleigh Bryant.

Footsteps pounded the boards outside and soon uniformed cops were piling into the room. They each took a look, dozens of fresh sets of eyes, and then the bosses started to arrive. Paul Kett, with his stoic face, walked into the room.

He saw the eyes of his colleagues. He saw Josie’s deathly white face. His gaze fell on the used shovels.

“She’s not here?” His voice cracked as he spoke, and Josie was forced to turn away as her eyes began to sting.

PART 5

The silence in the room was like nothing Josie had ever felt. It hung heavy, like an accusation of murder or a bell that chimed out every man’s doom. Unspent tears shone from each face. The more vocal were screaming threats into the killers face, but this wasn’t 24, and none of them were Jack Bauer.

The fact a child had died hadn’t even begun to sink in yet.

Josie stared at the shovels. Three of them, all encrusted with hard residue. The floor around their blades was clean. Maybe he’d cleaned them off already.

One of the uniforms said: “Where the hell would you bury anyone between York centre and here?”

Josie stared. The shovel’s were dry, pitted with old dirt. The man’s clothes were coated in orange dust and cement. She walked over to the shovels, crouched down and peered closely.

There was something else, a small blade hiding behind them. She looked around, caught Kett’s eye. “Look at this.”

He crouched down beside her. “What’s that? A… a trowel?”

“A builder’s trowel,” Josie said. “For a grave-digger?” Something deep was starting to speak to her, and not the spirits this time. It was intuition, belief, faith.

“The answer to his question,” she nodded at the cop who had wondered about any kind of burial site. “Is simple. You can’t.”

“It’s a brick trowel. And the orange reside is brick dust. This bastard’s escalated from graves to something closer to home. He’s bricked her up in the fuckin’ walls… Sir.”

Kett’s face was horrified. He stared around with a stupid look on his face. “But there aren’t any walls, Leigh. These are internal partitions, block and plasterboard.”

“I’m sure about this.” Josie said carefully. “He’d need time. And he’d need to be alone.” By now there were more than a dozen cops taking interest.

One of them said: “Basement.”

* * *

And down they went, angels dressed in combat gear and stab vests and heavy shoes. Twenty men and one woman, with their hopes and their perceptions of life hanging on a single chance. They attacked the walls with fingers and feet until their nails and knuckles were bleeding and scraped raw.

And when the cry went up that one of them had found fresh mortar they all dug it out. Blood coated the brick. There was no time to fetch tools. No time to lose. In a few minutes they had dislodged a brick. The big cops got their hands in there and pulled hard. More bricks tumbled on to the floor.

Josie was listening for any sound. Anything at all. When more bricks rained down she glimpsed feet.

“She’s there!”

The feet moved. The rest of the wall came shattering down. The cops paused for one heartfelt moment of sheer joy, a moment so great few of them would ever experience its wonder in their lives again.

It was the moment little Kayleigh Bryant opened her exhausted eyes, and said: “Hi.”

THE END

Content

David Leadbeater
Walking With Ghosts

PART 1

PART 2

PART 3

PART 4

PART 5