Veronica seemed to be getting angrier with every word Mary said. “So, did she hand over the babies along with death threats? Or is that something she’s just recently got into?”
Mary looked down at her lap and I noticed her wringing her hands; she looked incredibly nervous and I was shocked again by the change in her conduct since I saw her in Renfield. “You have to understand that Samantha is - and always has been - desperate.”
I waited for Will to make a stupid comment and was immensely relieved when he didn’t. “How do you mean?”
Mary shifted her position on the seat and spoke solely to me. “You wondered what I meant that night you were in the pub with Mr. Handsome over there…”
She nodded at Connor and I could almost feel Will fuming next to me.
Mary continued. “Well, seeing as you came to see me, I’m assuming you figured it out.”
I nodded, warily. “You were talking about…”
“Spirits, yes.” Mary said it so matter-of-factly that I wondered why I’d been embarrassed to say it out loud. “Or spectres, as I call them. You and I both know that a person’s life doesn’t end with their death. Unfortunately, this is something my daughter knows only too well.”
“Our mother knows?” I paused, trying to take everything in. “Why did you say unfortunately?” I could tell by Mary’s continued fidgeting that she was putting off telling us something.
“You have to understand that when someone is opened up to the world of the afterlife, and when they actually start to believe it, one of two things can happen. You can see it like I do - that it’s a gift, a confirmation that death doesn’t have to be the end and that there’s hope for our loved ones even after they’re gone - or you can see it how your mother sees it.”
She paused again. I tried to catch Veronica’s eye but she was focused solely on our newfound grandmother.
Mary glanced at the others, still clearly uncomfortable that they were there, but carried on regardless. “Samantha and I both have the same gift you have, Beth. Samantha is a reluctant believer - or gazer as I call it, ‘believer’ always sounds too religious, I think - although reluctant doesn’t really cover it. She was such a sceptic growing up, she used to think I was crazy and she’d tell me over and over again that there weren’t such things as spectres. She even tried to get me to go to a doctor, but I refused. So, because she was such a cynic, when it became apparent that there was more to a person’s life than our allocated eighty or ninety years on Earth, she couldn’t handle it. She locked herself in her room and became more and more terrified of the… things… she was seeing and hearing around her. Eventually it got too much and she came to me in hysterics, asking me to make it stop.”
She paused again and stared into space for a moment. “Of course, I couldn’t do anything; once you’re open to it you can’t stop it, and unless you accept it as a good thing, it can consume you. Many gazers who don’t accept the truth quickly become tainted. Samantha was one of the worst; she barely slept, she didn’t have a job, she lived off my money, and she never married or settled down. She’d been haunted by this other world - or the Former World as I call it - since before she got pregnant, and the thought of her children succumbing to the same fate nearly tipped her over the edge.”
I thought about Samantha’s (thinking of her as my mother still seemed too odd) extreme reaction, and wondered how close I’d been to it happening to me. Luckily, the whole spirit aspect hadn’t come as such a shock to me; I’d realised that deep down I must have always known about it on some level, or at least since my experience in Edinburgh.
It had slowly but surely been creeping up on me ever since.
Veronica looked like she’d been lost in thought too, but she managed to drag herself out of it. “So that’s why she doesn’t want us to see her? That’s why she threatened our parents?”
Mary nodded, again looking incredibly miserable. “You don’t know how distressed she was when she found out she was pregnant. She only knew about the Former World because of me and she didn’t want to pass on this knowledge - or curse as she thought of it - to you two. Of course, she wasn’t in any position to look after two children, either, and after Samantha had sucked me dry of all my money, I couldn’t provide financial support to anyone else. She thought you might want to seek her out when you got old enough and she did everything in her power to make sure that didn’t happen. So when Veronica found out…”
V smiled dryly. “She was pissed off?”
Mary flinched; I guessed she didn’t appreciate bad language. “No, she was devastated. You see, she was twenty-one herself when she first started becoming aware of the Former World. She thought history would repeat itself if either of you tried to make contact with her. From what I can tell, twenty-one is the usual age for gazers to start believing. They may have had experiences before, occurrences they couldn’t explain… but these things almost always intensify around your age. Don’t be mad with her; everything she’s done has been in a desperate bid to protect you both.”
I nodded slowly. “So I’m… a gazer?”
Mary carried on. “Everyone has the ability to see, or sometimes just hear or sense, spectres. But there are some people, like you and I, and Samantha of course, who have a better ability than anyone else. To a gazer, a spectre can be seen, heard, sensed… and sometimes appear just as a normal person.”
V interrupted, obviously feeling left out. “So why aren’t I a gazer? I’m Beth’s twin. Even Will’s been seeing… er… spectres.”
“Once a gazer turns twenty-one, the people closest to them can sometimes latch onto those abilities. It’s quite normal.”
Normal? Nothing about this conversation was normal.
But something else was bothering me. “You said they can appear like normal people?” Mary nodded. “I guess Connor’s dad looked vaguely normal, but I could tell what he was. I just can’t imagine seeing someone and not knowing. Is that what it’s like for you?”
Mary raised her eyebrows and slowly took a piece of paper out of her coat pocket, handing it to me gently. It was a page from a newspaper.
Unfolding it, I spread it out on the table. The main headline shouted out in huge capitals: ‘RENFIELD LOCAL KILLED IN CAR CRASH.’
I quickly scanned the first few lines and felt my stomach drop. “Twenty-four year old Renfield resident, Jeremy Pincer, was killed yesterday when his car collided with a deer on Willowton Road, just past Renfield Abbey.”
I looked up at Mary in shock. “He’s dead? That’s awful! I only saw him about a week ago.”
Mary shook her head. “I brought the paper with me in case I had to try and convince you about spectres… look at the date.”
It’s never a good thing when someone tells you to look at the date of a newspaper in that way, as if you had amnesia or had somehow time travelled without knowing it.
Unfortunately, it was neither of those things. It was worse. The paper had been published three years ago.
My gaze wandered to the photograph accompanying the article: it showed a smashed-up black car with the caption ‘Pincer’s hybrid Honda Civic was written off during the crash’.
A black Honda Civic? Willowton Road? Near the Abbey? I thought back to the eerie group of sheep, to Sister Mary Eunice, to the car I’d jumped to avoid…
“No.”
Mary put her hand on my shoulder. “I knew Jeremy before he died, but I’ve come to know him much better since. He loved working at the pub, and whenever he can find a portal in the Former World, he goes back there.”
“But there were other people in the pub… could they see him as well?”
Mary smiled at me. “They were spectres, too. The Doctor’s Surgery pub wasn’t open the last night of Fright Fest. It never is.”
I couldn’t accept this. “But he served me. He poured me a drink! He handled money.”
Mary nodded. “Some spectres can’t physically touch things in the Modern World, some haven’t yet learned to speak with the
living… but some can manipulate the space around them. They look solid, they can interact with their surroundings. Jeremy has learned very quickly. He’s a clever lad.”
I shook my head. “Was a clever lad, you mean.”
Mary hesitated. “Is, was, that’s one of the joys of knowing about the Former World. They’re almost the same.”
I shook my head again, getting angry. “But he’s dead. That couple, they were dead too! And I didn’t know. I had no idea.” That realisation was far scarier than any dark, shadowy ghost.
Mary patted me on the shoulder again. “You’ll get used to it. I’m here to help.”
V cut in before I got a chance to respond. “Like you helped Samantha?” She was obviously getting pretty mad herself, and she closed her eyes and took a deep breath before carrying on. “Look, we know about… spectres now, anyway, so surely seeing her wouldn’t make a difference?”
The thought of a crazy woman rocking herself to sleep every night while she tried to block out disembodied voices crossed my mind, but I had a wild idea that maybe with me and V to back her up, Mary might be able to get through to her.
Instead, Mary shook her head and I could see tears filling her eyes. I had an extremely bad feeling and I reached out to grab Will’s hand from next to me. “Mary?”
I could see her trying to get herself under control before speaking again. “A few days ago Samantha heard of your little argument at Fright Fest and… she didn’t take it well. Apparently, one of her neighbours phoned the police when they heard the commotion coming from her room, and, well, she’s been taken to a clinic just outside of Birston.”
I slowly took in what Mary was saying. I felt an odd detachment; this woman she was talking about was my mother, and yet I’d never met her or even known about her until a few days ago. It was all too much to get my head around.
Veronica’s voice broke the silence. “What sort of clinic? Like a psyche ward?”
Mary didn’t seem like she was going to answer so I decided to change the subject slightly. I’d finally found someone who could explain, or at least try and explain, the weird things that had been happening to me, and I wanted to make the most of the opportunity.
“Mary, the… spectres you’ve encountered, are they something we should be scared of?”
She took a deep breath before she started speaking. She seemed more comfortable talking about this than about her daughter. “Most people are. Most people who’ve seen them are so scared they convince themselves they didn’t see anything. But when you know about the Former World, you’ve got to try and embrace it. If you start to fear it, it will consume you.”
I shook my head; she didn’t understand what I was asking. “No, I meant the actual individual spirits. Are they generally… good? We think one of them has been trying to help me.”
Mary smiled a little wistfully. “Spectres come in all shapes and sizes. You have to remember that they were all once flesh and blood, like you and me, and as I’m sure you know, people can be good or they can be devious, irritable, vicious, and downright evil. What a person was in life gets amplified when they pass into the Former World, so you get virtuous spirits, and then you get the… difficult spirits.”
I thought back to Edinburgh. “Like poltergeists?”
Mary laughed. “Yes, I suppose you could use that term, although I tend to call them Rogue spirits, to separate them from the Pure ones. Unfortunately, that’s one of the things Hollywood films have got right about the Former World.”
I looked at Will to see his reaction; he liked to act tough about horror films but I knew that deep down he was terrified by them. As I probably would be now, too. He just stared back at me, his expression unreadable.
“Not that this isn’t all fascinating, but what about Samantha? What was the ‘commotion’? What happened?” V’s voice was low and raspy and I could tell she didn’t really want to know the answer. I didn’t really want to know the answer.
Mary’s previous smile faded. “I don’t know exactly what happened, but apparently there was deafening screaming and lots of banging and then just… silence.”
I found my voice again. “You don’t know? You haven’t seen her since?”
There was a pause. “Oh, I’ve been with her every day. She’s… unresponsive.”
Rach spoke for the first time since Mary had appeared. “Unresponsive?”
Mary nodded slowly. “She’s in a catatonic state.”
V’s face was draining of all colour. “I don’t understand, what happened?”
Mary shrugged, looking more tired than ever. “If you’re open to the Former World, it can become extremely heightened during moments of intense emotion or severe stress. It finally got too much for Samantha. I can only imagine what she saw in her last lucid moments.”
Mary only just got the last few words out before she broke down in tears. I wasn’t quite sure what to do and after a small hesitation, I let go of Will’s hand and moved closer to her, putting my arm around her awkwardly. “I’m really sorry about your daughter, especially if it was us that caused… whatever it was that happened to her.”
Mary shook her head violently. “No! You mustn’t blame yourselves. If your finding out about her wasn’t the catalyst for what she did then something else would have been. She’d been fighting against it for too long… it was only a matter of time.”
Veronica leaned in closer, too. “What do you mean, what she did?”
Mary put her hands over her face, wiping away the tears, and then brought them down to her lap. “She’s not just in the clinic because they think she’s mad; she’s there because she tried to kill herself.”
The silence which descended over our little group was absolute, and I only vaguely noticed as, one by one, every member of the gang turned their gazes on me.
Veronica was the first to break through the quiet. “Does that happen a lot? With gazers?”
Mary looked down at her hands, not saying a word, and Will put his arm around me, in a kind of protective gesture. Although I’m guessing an arm around a shoulder wouldn’t protect a crazy person from wanting to commit suicide.
I was definitely regretting the chocolate milkshake now.
Clearly wanting to get away from the whole Samantha thing, V tried to change the subject. “Can I ask another question? Why do you call it the Former World?”
Mary looked off into the distance, seemingly thinking of how to answer.
During the lull in conversation, I glanced around the Diner. Everyone was talking and laughing - everyone except for a lone figure standing just inside the main door. I tried to smile, to convey that everything was good, but the figure just stood there, not moving an inch.
Eventually, Mary seemed to find the words she needed. “The spectres who are there… some of them are similar to us here, in the Modern World. Take Jeremy, for instance. Others, though… are different. They’re mere shadows of their former selves, drifting around, soulless, empty. They’re former people - some can’t talk, some can’t function like we do. The way they are… it’s prehistoric, almost. For some people it’s as if, when you die, you lose your humanity. You go back to a primal time. You don’t live, you simply exist.”
That stunned everyone, and by the look on Veronica’s face, she was already regretting asking the question.
Mary smiled, trying to dissolve the tension. “I know this is an awful lot to take in, but I only live in Renfield, so feel free to come and visit me any time you like. You can ask all the questions you want, and, Beth… I want to help you through this as much as I can. I know I failed with my own daughter, but I can tell you’re different to Samantha. You’re strong. I can tell you won’t give up.”
Tears started to form in my eyes as I took in what she was saying. How was I strong, exactly? And hadn’t I already decided to give up by running away to London?
Could I really leave now?
Not only did I have a new sister to get to grips with, but a new birth mother and a new gr
andmother, too. Not to mention the whole gazer thing.
Could I really deal with that on my own?
I wasn’t strong - at least I didn’t feel like I was - and if the past couple of months were anything to go by, I’d need all the help I could get.
Looking round at my group of friends, all of them smiling at me encouragingly, I knew that I couldn’t leave.
Not yet, at least.
I had to see where this gazer thing was going.
I had to learn more about the Former World.
And I had to do it without losing my mind and ending up in a psyche ward. Great.
Hoping I wasn’t going to live to regret this, I looked at V, Will, Connor, Max, Rach and Mary in turn, and made my announcement. “I think I’d better stay in Little Forest for a while longer.”
The cheers and animated chatter from my friends washed over me as I looked at the main door again.
The Garden Man - Connor’s dad, as I now knew - nodded at me briefly: a tiny, seemingly insignificant motion that looked like it took a huge effort to complete.
And, with that, he was gone.
Epilogue
People always talk about ghosts. Ghosts of the past, ghosts of memories. Vague, shadowy, metaphorical ghosts.
It turns out it’s the real ones you need to look out for.
I’d left the Diner a while after Mary had, needing to walk in the fresh air, needing to be alone for a few minutes.
To tell the truth, I was majorly freaking out.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Emma. She’d been stuck in a loop, reliving her death over and over again… I couldn’t think of anything creepier. I could only hope that now the mystery of her death had been solved, she could get some kind of peace. She could move on.
And then there was Samantha. What if by the time I was middle-aged, I was in hospital having attempted to kill myself? What if I didn’t even make it to middle age?
I could feel a panic attack coming on so I quickly got out my phone and dialled Will’s number. He answered on the third ring.
“Miss us already?”
“No, I was just worrying that I’ll go mad and try and kill myself like my mother.” I still couldn’t call her anything as familiar as mum.
“Beth… you’re not going to end up like her. Come back to the Diner, Connor’s seeing how monumentally drunk he can get on Stars & Stripes cocktails.”