Ghost Stories - Lorna Bradbury [10]
‘The first time was about a week after my buyer left. I was walking off a hangover through a bird market. with the bustle and the colour and the noise of the birds and a cacophony of Cantonese chatter, it was a world away from my nightmares. But then I saw her: an old woman selling caged parakeets. She was bent over her table, counting her takings. and then she looked up – and she had the face of the dead thing.
‘I fled. I tried to call Jia Lei, but his number was no longer working. I thought of calling my Taiwanese buyer – but what would I say?
‘You think i’ve lost it, don’t you? a week later, I saw it again, as I was about to take a taxi. I was half into the cab, when the driver – a man with a shaggy black mane – turned his face to me. and it was that face again.
‘I had to leave hong Kong. I made arrangements for my showroom and my apartment. I booked a flight to London and a train to Edinburgh and a cottage in Perthshire. Perhaps, I thought, it was Hong Kong, the city, the stress. The Scottish countryside seemed the perfect contrast. and so I left, though not before I had glimpsed that dreadful thing again – under the brim of a policeman’s cap, in a crowded hotel lobby, reflected in a shop window.
‘That first week in the highlands was bliss. I stopped drinking, I went for long walks, I read. I conjectured that the dreams and apparition were brought on by the crowds, the pace of life and the constant threat that my trade might attract unwelcome attention from the authorities. I had burned out, I reasoned, gone a little crazy in the hubbub and heat of the East. I would not be the first.
‘But at the end of the first fortnight, I woke to hear someone at the door of the cottage – not knocking, but scratching, scrabbling – and the rattling sound of breath. I spent the whole night with my head in my hands, not daring to glance at the windows, with that slow, deliberate scraping at the door. That was almost the worst of it – the sense that the dead thing was in no hurry. when it stopped as morning broke, I heard it sigh.
That was three days ago. after that night, I returned to Edinburgh. Yesterday, as I walked back to my hotel, a beggar in a cloke asked me for change. I rummaged in my pocket for a coin. when I looked up, I saw that he had that face.
‘I know what you’re thinking. i’ve made arrangements to see someone in London. a shrink, whatever. I don’t care what drugs they give me. i’d take electro-shock treatment – anything to make it stop. i’m sorry – i’m sorry for ranting on like this. But it’s more than I can take.’
We had finished our wine by this point. The suburbs of the great city flitted by in the darkness outside. when we got to Kings Cross, Kirklees all but begged me to dine with him. we went to his small Upper Street flat afterwards, for coffee and scotch – and for him, I noticed, sleeping pills as well. Eventually, he slipped into an anaesthetised sleep. I wrote him a note with my number and email address and left him – feeling a little guilty as I did.
Gimme Shelter
Pat Black
As the freezing fog came down, Emma headed to the shelter. it was an instinctive move, as there was something chilly about the prospect of being isolated in the dirty white glow.
She shivered as she strode along the train platform, the mist barely showing the lights of the closed-up station house. Somewhere further down the track, a red light was barely visible through the fog.
The shelter was one of the older ones, built to last, but not lasting well. Paint peeled off the brick-work in the rare spots that hadn’t been covered in jagged graffiti, and an ancient stench fouled the air despite the two open doorways. Rickety benches ran along the inside, but Emma didn’t want to sit down on them with just her tights covering her legs. Standing in the doorway, she paced and stamped her feet to generate warmth.
She heard footsteps coming down the platform