The Empty Desk (14 page)

Chrissie took her daughter from Melinda the moment she reached her side. She was clearly torn between telling her off for disobeying her and putting herself in danger, and gratitude that she was safe. The girl showed no sign of having seen Alice; she didn't turn to look at her once, but tears of fear ran down her face. Something had scared her enough to make her stop.

“Thank you,” Melinda said in little more than a whisper, but Chrissie still heard her.

“Why did you say that?” she asked. “Who are you thanking?”

Melinda didn't answer for a moment. Instead she retrieved her shoes and put them back on, wincing at the bruise that was fast forming on the sole of her foot.

“Is she here? Please tell me she's here.”

“She's here,” Melinda said.

“I knew this was where she would be. This is where it happened. Please tell her that I am so sorry. I should never have brought her up here.”

“It's all right,” said Alice. “It wasn't your fault.”

Melinda passed the message on, but the woman was not really listening. She was close to tears and holding her daughter as tightly to her as she possibly could. The girl was sobbing, pressing her face into Chrissie's shoulder.

“We should never have come up here,” Chrissie said. “We were told we shouldn't but we came up here anyway. I wanted to, and Alice tagged along. I couldn't stop her.”

The ghost protested, but Melinda tried to shut her out for the moment. She needed to hear what Chrissie had to say. She needed to understand what had happened all those years ago, to discover what this was all about.

As the little girl's sobs subsided, Chrissie relaxed her grip a little as she moved farther away from the bridge.

“We were just playing,” she said, “but Alice wanted to go on the bridge. I couldn't stop her. I shouted for her to stop but she wouldn't take any notice of me. She ran onto the bridge and she slipped. Before I could get to her she had fallen into the gorge. The river was running fast, and she was washed away. There was nothing I could do to help. Nothing anyone could do. And we shouldn't have been there in the first place. It was all my fault.”

“What did you do?” Melinda asked. There was no doubt that Chrissie was distressed, that she was replaying every instant over again in her head.

“Nothing,” she admitted. “I did nothing. I pretended that Alice hadn't come out with me, that I'd gone out on my own and that she was still in the house when I left. I knew that I would be blamed if I told them what had happened. I've kept this secret nearly all my life without telling anyone. But it was all my fault.”

Melinda wrapped her arms around Chrissie and the little girl she was carrying, the little girl who almost carried the name of the girl who had died in this place all those years ago.

“Please,” said the small voice beside her. “Please tell her that it wasn't her fault. Tell her that it was mine and that I'm sorry. I shouldn't have made her take me with her. I shouldn't have followed her here.”

Melinda took a moment to gather her thoughts. She wanted to make things right and give Chrissie the chance to let go of the past. She wasn't here to judge anyone—she was here to help.

“Alice said you shouldn't blame yourself,” she said. “She knows that it was her fault, not yours. She says she's sorry that you've had to suffer because of what she did.”

“But I should still have said something!” Chrissie said.

“What difference would it have made to Alice?” Melinda asked. “It might have made things easier for your mom and dad, but it might just have easily have made it worse.”

“So what happens now?” Chrissie asked, wiping tears from her eyes.

Melinda was about to try to explain, but there was a sudden silence. The machinery on the building site came to a halt, and all she could hear was the sound of birds singing and the flow of the river in the gorge. The clouds lost their grayness, and a light opened up in the direction of the bridge.

“It's time to go now,” Melinda said, crouching down to Alice's eye level. The sadness had gone from her eyes and it had been replaced by something else that might have been hope. “It's time to move on.”

“Thank you,” Alice said and turned away from her. She started to walk slowly toward the light, gradually moving faster until she started to run, pausing just once to wave at her. This time Melinda didn't run after her. This time she didn't even call her name.

“She's gone, hasn't she?” Chrissie asked as the clouds returned to cover the sun and the sound of machinery filled the air once more. She lowered Alicia to the ground but kept a tight grip on her hand. The little girl had no idea just how much danger she might have been in, but now her mother was not going to let her get anywhere near the bridge again. She was going to keep her safe and secure by her side.

“She's gone,” Melinda confirmed. She wished she could have spoken to the girl a little longer to reassure her that everything was going to be all right, but maybe she didn't need to hear that. Maybe she already knew. She had seemed happy and smiling as she had gone into the light and left them behind.

“And she stopped Alicia from going onto the bridge, didn't she?” Chrissie said. “That was what scared her and made her stop long enough for you to catch up with her?”

“I think so,” Melinda said. “I have a feeling that she was trying to pay you back for all the heartache that she caused you all those years ago.”

“She didn't—it was all my fault. I was the one who caused all the heartache.”

“Well, that's the way that she saw it,” Melinda said. “And that was all that mattered. She didn't want you to blame yourself any longer.”

“Why do you think it took her so long to find me?”

“It's more that it took a long time for her to find someone who could see her. I have a feeling that you have my son to thank for that. He was the one who was sure that he could see her.”

“Where did he see her? Here?”

“No. He saw her in school.” Melinda explained about the desk that no one would sit at and the fact that Aiden had a gift of his own. “She even sat at a desk with her own name carved into it.”

“My God, is that still there? I'd completely forgotten about it. I thought they would have replaced those desks by now.”

“You knew about it?” Melinda asked.

Chrissie nodded. “She got into so much trouble about that. She carved her name into it when she'd only been there for a few weeks. The teacher made her sit there every break for a month until she learned that she'd done something very bad.”

Melinda wondered if that was why she had gone back there. She thought she had done a bad thing and needed to be punished. It made her sad to think that might have been the case, but at least it meant that she had found her eventually.

“I guess they make things last at that school, but it doesn't matter anymore,” she said. “She'll be content now. She's gone to a better place. A happier place.”

“So it's all over?” Dana asked after Melinda had brought her up to date with everything that had happened.

“Yes, that's it,” said Melinda as she helped straighten the classroom. Aiden was sitting at the desk that Alice had occupied for so long, writing a note of his own.

“What about the sister?”

“Chrissie? When I left her she was going to see her mother to introduce her to the granddaughter she doesn't even seem to know that she has. I hope they can work things out. It would be a real shame if they can't.”

“Do you think she'll tell her what happened?”

“I really hope not. They've hardly seen each other for more than twenty years. I don't think it's time to start sharing secrets like that, do you? It will just reopen old wounds that might never have the chance to heal. Some secrets are best kept that way. Once they've been buried, it's best to leave them well alone,” Melinda said, placing the last of the chairs on the desk, ready for the cleaners to come in.

“And what about Alice?”

“I have to believe that she's gone to a better place than this. Both girls have blamed themselves all this time. Perhaps now they can both let go of that guilt.”

“Do you think the children would be prepared to use this desk now?” Dana asked. “Or will there be something left behind?”

“Nothing but a name carved in the wood, I suspect. It certainly doesn't seem to bother Aiden, so I'm sure it would be fine. If you rearranged all of them, I don't think anyone would even notice.”

“I hope this doesn't mean that I won't see you anymore, not now that we've connected again,” Dana said.

“I don't know how you can even think such a thing. Why don't you come around for supper tomorrow? Jim's out, so it would just be the two of us.”

“Three,” said Aiden.

“Sounds good,” said Dana. “I'll bring the wine . . . and the ice cream.”

Terri managed to make a story out of it eventually, but her piece said nothing about Melinda, the ghost, or even the university department where Ned was studying. Ned told her about the conversation Melinda had had with Chrissie, and it led Terri to doing a little investigating of her own. Eventually the remains of a body were found some way downstream, and Terri was ready to tie it all in with the girl that had gone missing all those years ago.

The story attracted some attention when she was able to sell it to one of the big city newspapers, which printed it with her byline. It might not have won her any kind of award, but it meant that a few people started to take her a little more seriously.

Eventually the call came, and she got the shot at one of the newspapers she had been hoping to hear from and packed her bags to head for the big city. Ned was glad that he had been able to help her a little on the way, but somehow he never expected to hear from her again.

It took a while for Lowe's Autos to get back on its feet, yet slowly but surely the customers who'd begun to lose faith in the business began to return. Tom gave Dan a call the night that Melinda visited, and he was only too happy to come back to work for a few mornings a week. He had developed a full social life once he had overcome the grief of losing his wife and couldn't afford to give any more time than that, but it was enough to start making a real difference. Within a year Tom had taken on a trainee and Lauren had managed to get a grip on all the paperwork by putting a computer in the office. It seemed to be working well for all of them.

The discovery of Alice's remains had also brought some closure for her mother. She had no wish to leave Grandview, but at least it had brought her closer to her surviving daughter and the grandchild she had somehow forgotten had even existed. Chrissie started to visit a little more regularly, and while she would never think of this place as home, she was no longer afraid of returning.

Steve Lockley is the author of almost a hundred short stories, along with the Sally Reardon Supernatural Mysteries novella series (with Steven Savile) and novels ranging from Young Adult horror to modern day high octane thriller. He has also worked on a number of TV and game tie-in projects including contributions to a couple of Doctor Who anthologies.

He has been nominated nine times for British Fantasy awards, and was presented with the British Fantasy Society Special Award in 1996 for his work on the horror convention Welcome to My Nightmare. He has also served as a judge for the World Fantasy Awards.

Ghost Whisperer: The Empty Desk
© 2015 by ABC Studios and CBS Studios Inc.

Ghost Whisperer™ is a trademark and a copyright of CBS Studios Inc. Licensed by CBS Consumer Products Inc. 2014. All rights reserved.

A novel by Steven Lockley. Based upon the television series
Ghost Whisperer
, created by John Gray.

All rights reserved under all applicable International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

EPub Edition October 2015 ISBN: 9781443446006

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, by arrangement with CBS Consumer Products Inc.

First published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd in this ePub edition in 2015.

HarperCollins books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use through our Special Markets Department.

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
2 Bloor Street East, 20th Floor
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M4W 1A8

www.harpercollins.ca

HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.harpercollins.com.au

HarperCollins Publishers (Canada) Ltd.

2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollins.ca

HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited

P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

The News Building
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9SG, United Kingdom
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk

HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
http://www.harpercollins.com