Twisted Little Things and Other Stories (37 page)

She waits.

No reply.

“Gary!”

“She still doesn't get it, does she?” Angela mutters under her breath. “I think she might be a few sandwiches short of a picnic. She's dating an asshole.”

“Great,” the girl says with a sigh, turning and trudging back this way, “just when -”

She stops suddenly, staring straight at me. A moment later, she turns and looks at Angela.

“Who...”

She takes a step back.

“Who the hell are you?”

“You can see us?” Angela asks.

“Who are you?” the girl stammers. “I'm not alone! My boyfriend's real close, he'll come running if I scream.”

“We're just two lost souls out on the towpath at night,” Angela replies, taking a step toward her. “This is my friend Robert, and
my
name is Angela, or maybe you've heard of me by my other name. Amanda.”

“What?” the girl asks. “I can barely even see you, who -”

Her voice stops abruptly. In the darkness, I can just about make out her wild, staring eyes, and she starts to back away as Angela steps closer.

“My name is Amanda Bates,” Angela continues, “or Angela, I'm not entirely sure. But either way, this gentleman here is Robert Ward, and you just broke into his boat. Do you realize how immensely annoyed he is about that?”

“No,” the girl gasps, “you... You can't be Amanda Bates, Amanda Bates drowned years ago...”

“Yeah, well... about that.” Angela pauses, before stepping right up close to her and leaning toward her ear. “Do you wanna hear something really cool?”

I don't hear the next part, as Angela whispers something, but the girl's eyes become even wider as she stares straight at me. I've seen scared people before, but never anyone who looks as if they're about to collapse. The girl even starts trembling for a moment, as if fear has gripped her whole body, and Angela continues to whisper for a few more seconds before finally stepping back with a smile.

“What did you say to her?” I ask.

No reply.

“What did you say?” I continue, stepping closer. “What -”

Before I can finish, the girl suddenly lets out a shrill, ear-piercing scream. In the process, she turns and runs, stumbling through the mud as she races into the darkness.

“Gary!” she screeches. “Gary, I saw them! Gary!”

“What did you say to her?” I ask, shocked as I hear the girl still crying out for her boyfriend as she gets further and further away.

“I told her to leave your boat alone,” Angela replies, turning to me with a faint smile. “Well, not in so many words, but that was the gist of it. I just tried to sound really scary. I don't think she'll ever dare come back out here, but we probably shouldn't tempt fate. Maybe it's about time you took your boat a little further along the canal.”

I open my mouth to tell her I agree, but for a moment I simply stand and listen to the girl's screaming voice getting further and further away.

“This is crazy,” I mutter, turning back to look at the boat.

“Tell me about it.”

“It can't be true,” I continue. “If something had happened to me, I'd know. I'd...”

“Haven't you had any dreams? Or things that
feel
like dreams?”

I turn to tell her about the one dream I remember, but suddenly I see another flashlight coming this way.

“Gary, don't!” a voice yells in the distance. “I'm telling you, I saw them!”

A moment later, this Gary individual returns, grinning from ear to ear as he shines his light toward the boat.

“Get out of here!” Angela says firmly.

The guy simply steps past us.

“He can't see us,” she continues. “Great. I was hoping this would be easy.”

Before I can say anything, she steps back to the boat and grabs the water hose, pulling it onto the towpath and then holding it up in the moonlight.

“What the hell?” Gary stammers, freezing for a moment, before Angela starts walking toward him.

“Can you see
this
?” she asks.

He pauses for a few seconds, before turning and running back along the towpath, dropping his flashlight in the process. As he gets further and further away, he can just about be heard shouting, and then the girl starts shouting too. Finally, it's clear that they're running away.

“I've got to admit,” Angela says with a smile, still holding the pipe, “that I quite enjoyed doing that.”

Seven

“Here you go!”

A few minutes later, once I've started the boat's engine, Angela pulls the second rope free and tosses it to me from the towpath. Grabbing the rope, I immediately start wrapping it into a coil as the boat slowly starts edging further out toward the center of the canal.

“Are you sure you don't want to come with me?” I ask. “I could give you a lift.”

“Thanks,” she replies, “but I think this area might be my patch. I should probably stick to familiar ground. Besides, if that girl and her boyfriend come back, I've got a few ideas about how I can really scare them off for good.”

“But then what?” I continue. “You can't just spend all your nights wandering between the cemetery and the canal.”

“Can't I? I think that's what I've been doing for the past fifteen years or so.”

“Still, you -”

“And you've just been motoring along the canals for a lot longer.”

I open my mouth to argue with her, but I guess she has a point.

Reaching down, she picks up her backpack and hauls it over her shoulder. She winces slightly, and I can tell from her slightly hunched posture that the pack is weighing her down.

“Maybe you'll swing back this way some day,” she continues. “We might bump into one another again.”

“I suppose we might,” I tell her.

“If we remember,” she adds.

“I'm sorry?”

“I was just thinking, maybe ghosts don't really form new memories.” She pauses, with a hint of sadness in her eyes. “Maybe tomorrow night, we'll both go back to not knowing what we are. You'll think you're just floating along the canals, and I'll think I'm just ghost-hunting.”

“You should try to go home,” I reply.

“I think I'm stuck here.”

“Then take the offer of a ride and -”

“You're too far out now.”

I reach out to grab the steering arm. “I can bring her back closer to the towpath, and then -”

“No, you're good,” she adds, clearly not wanting to take me up on the offer. Now that I'm so far from the riverbank, in fact, she's a little hard to make out. “Good luck out there,” she continues. “On the off-chance that we remember this night, I'll think of you. It was fun scaring those two idiots. I wish I could see their faces when they realize they took some photos and then they accidentally left the camera on the boat. I don't know, maybe there's some hidden rule that means evidence always gets lost. Maybe ghosts aren't supposed to meet, but...”

She pauses.

“But I'm glad we did,” she continues finally.

“Me too,” I reply, and now I can't really see her at all.

“And I hope you find your dog!” she shouts. “For all we know, he might be making his way back to find you! One night he might suddenly appear from the darkness!”

“He might,” I mutter with a faint flush of sadness.

“Bye!” she calls out. I can just about make out her arm waving in the darkness, but soon the boat is out in the middle of the canal and I can't see any hint of the towpath.

“Goodbye!” I shout back to her. “And Angela, you really should try to go home, okay? I'm sure you can do it, if you really try!”

I wait for a reply, but now there's only darkness and silence.

“Angela?” I call out.

Nothing.

“Huh,” I mutter, taking a deep breath and feeling a flash of sadness now she's gone. Reaching to the control panel, I cut the boat's motor, allowing myself a moment of silence to listen out for any hint of her as she trudges along the towpath, but the entire scene is now absolutely quiet, almost as if she was never there in the first place.

Finally, after a couple of minutes, I re-start the engine and turn the steering arm. Checking my watch, I see that it's 4.38am, which means the night is almost over. I could find somewhere else to moor, but there hardly seems much point when I'd just have to get moving again after a few hours. Once I've got the boat pointing in the right direction, therefore, I gently push the gear selector forward and start making my way along the canal.

“It's going to be a long day, Baxter,” I call out, glancing back down into the kitchen, where the light is now on again. “We didn't get much sleep tonight, did we?”

I wait, but a moment later I spot his red rubber bone on the floor, and I remember that Baxter hasn't been with me for a long time now. Angela said that he might show up one night, but I'm not sure I can really rely on that. Then again, I suppose one shouldn't count anything out.

Except ghosts.

And then I see him, curled on the sofa, snoozing the way he always used to sleep after a busy night. I can't help smiling as I realize that somehow he found me again.

Taking a deep breath, I finally start laughing. After a moment, the laugh grows and I find myself chuckling at my own stupidity. I honestly cannot believe that I allowed young Angela to fill my head with so much nonsense. I've always considered myself to be a smart, serious-minded chap but I actually let her convince me that I might be dead. Of course, now that I'm alone again, I know that the whole idea is ludicrous. I can feel the cold metal of the steering arm against the palm of my hand, and a light breeze is rippling the dark water and ruffling what little hair I still have on my head, and Baxter is taking a nap.

“Ghosts, indeed,” I mutter, still smiling at the idea. “As if.”

Angela was just some foolish girl who tried to play a prank on me. Maybe she was even in cahoots with those other two, to make the whole thing seem more possible. Whatever, I don't know exactly what was going on, but I'm absolutely positive that both of us are made of flesh and blood. I've never been a religious man, and I believe that when I die, I shall simply cease to exist. It's truly hard to believe that I let Angela convince me, even for a couple of hours, that I might actually be dead.

And I can't help laughing.

Ahead, there's only the void of night, but I know the sun will rise again soon. It has to. The sun will show its face, and that will be all the proof I need that this whole night was just one big charade. My wrist creaks a little as I adjust the steering arm. There are no ghosts on the towpath, and even if there were, I'm most certainly not one of them. I'm just an old man on an old boat, with his dog, drifting along the canal and heading into the darkness, waiting for the light.

Also by Amy Cross

THE NURSE

“Twenty years ago, something very bad happened in this house. But it's over now. I promise.”
When Rachel moves to a new house with her mother, she immediately realizes that something isn't quite right. Although she's blind, Rachel can tell that the stories about the house's past don't add up. And slowly, she starts to worry that someone or something from that past might still be around.
Soon, Rachel learns the story of the house's previous occupant, a troubled nurse who spent every waking moment caring for a sick old man. The nurse eventually lost her mind, resulting in a series of horrific murders, but have the events of that awful time truly been left behind? Or is something stirring in the night, something that only Rachel seems to notice?
The Nurse
is the story of a girl who finds herself trapped in a sinister house, and a woman who believes she's being haunted by the ghost of a long-dead child. Contains scenes of violence.

Also by Amy Cross

THE BODY AT AUERCLIFF

“We'll bury her so deep, even her ghost will have a mouth full of dirt!”
When Rebecca Wallace arrives at Auercliff to check on her aged aunt, she's in for a shock. Her aunt's mind is crumbling, and the old woman refuses to let Rebecca stay overnight. And just as she thinks she's starting to understand the truth, Rebecca makes a horrifying discovery in one of the house's many spare rooms.
A dead body. A woman. Old and rotten. And her aunt insists she has no idea where it came from.
The truth lies buried in the past. For generations, the occupants of Auercliff have been tormented by the repercussions of a horrific secret. And somehow everything seems to be centered upon the mausoleum in the house's ground, where every member of the family is entombed once they die.
Whose body was left to rot in one of the house's rooms? Why have successive generations of the family been plagued by a persistent scratching sound? And what really happened to Rebecca many years ago, when she found herself locked inside the Auercliff mausoleum?
The Body at Auercliff
is a horror story about a family and a house, and about the refusal of the past to stay buried.