Ghost Stories - Lorna Bradbury [13]
Beneath her, the rail began to shudder.
‘I tried to warn you,’ the boy said, hissing out breath between his teeth – which failed to steam up in the frigid air. ‘They only want people to bring down to their level. They’re not nice kids. anyone will do.’
‘Come with us,’ the two girls with the eyeshadow said.
‘You’re so warm,’ the drunken girl whispered.
‘You’re pretty,’ said the boy with the pudding bowl haircut.
Twin beams of light tore through the gloom, like crackles of lightning through cloud. The rumbling beneath her feet increased. and Emma couldn’t move; the frozen hands had a firm grip of her. The pale faces surrounded her, yellow flecks in their eyes. one of them giggled.
‘You’re coming with us,’ someone whispered.
Emma screamed. And then something caught her eye on the platform; a blur of orange, booted feet crunching the salt, lungs labouring with exercise for the first time in years. The engineer leapt onto the platform, almost collapsing with the effort. The lights bore down on him as the train lumbered towards them – not fast, but quick enough to kill them. Electric blue light blazed along overhead. The engineer got to his feet and sprinted towards her, even as the train’s siren hollered and the emergency brakes spat sparks along the rails. and as the engineer lunged for her, hands gripping her coat, the children seemed the dissolve into the mist and the man took hold, yelling, propelling them both into the frozen vegetation by the side of the track as the front carriage lumbered past them.
The pair of them lay there in a rude heap, even as the driver started shouting, their haggard breathing making fluid sculptures in the air.
Friends
Richard Crompton
For an unpopular guy, Lake sure had a lot of friends. Thousands, according to his profile. intrigued, I sent him a friend request. he declined.
‘Sorry pal,’ he said, when I saw him in the elevator. ‘But, you know, I got so many friends, I gotta be selective. no offence.’
‘They say,’ said Matt, in the bar that evening, ‘the founders only keep him on because they feel sorry for him. a year after start-up, he got offered stock, but took cash instead. Bought a pizza meal for four, ate it alone. Man, that’s got to be the most expensive pizza ever made.’
‘Do you think he ever sees sunlight?’ asked Dee. ‘i mean, i’ve never seen him outside the server room. and the smell! Thank God that place has powerful air-con.’
‘I just don’t get it,’ I said. ‘according to his profile, he has, like, a bazillion friends. and what, i’m not good enough?’
‘Count yourself lucky,’ said Joel, who’d come back with a handful of beers. ‘You don’t want to be that guy’s friend. all his friends are dead.’
‘what?’
‘Sure. They’re all dead. Every one of them. Don’t you know what he does?’
We all looked at Joel blankly. no one at our company knew what anyone else actually did.
‘Lake’s in charge of the dead accounts.’
Despite the music, a sombre silence fell over us. The dead accounts. They were something we seldom thought about, and never spoke of.
The company had grown exponentially these last few years. From a chat room for high school kids, we’d flourished to become one of the biggest social networks in the world. we had millions of members and, as you’d expect, every now and again, one would die.
That’s where Lake came in, explained Joel. after a user’s death, their profile remained online. after all, we had no way of knowing the difference between a dead user and a merely inactive one. a few years ago, we got a subpoena from the mother of a seventeen-year-old who’d died of leukaemia. alongside the usual tributes and condolences his friends had put up on his profile, some sickos had started posting a load of jokes and offensive comments. we avoided a lawsuit by promising to monitor the profiles more closely.
Lake took to the task with relish. we couldn’t just take down a profile after a complaint from the bereaved family – after all, it might be a hoax. we had to