Thicker Than Water

This time when he spoke I heard the word as a tinny, baseless whisper in the air: the hum of a breathless mosquito.

‘Mark . . .’"

"‘Did he bring it? The thing that’s living in the Salisbury now, and making people cut themselves? Did he summon it, in some way? With his hurt-kit instead of a magic circle? Is that what happened?’

Kenny blinked, but he had no tear ducts now to wash the surface of those fleshless eyes. A grimace spread across his face in slow motion.

‘Angry,’ he whispered. ‘Because . . . an . . . an .

After each repetition of that syllable, the pauses lengthened. Whatever he was trying to say, it was a gradient which his cooling consciousness refused to climb.

‘Who was angry?’ I asked. ‘Mark? Mark was angry?’

The ghost whimpered, bringing its hands up to chest height with the fingers curled like hooks. It looked as though it wanted to rend its own breast, but of course that wasn’t an option.

‘Cut,’ it said, very distinctly. ‘Again. And again. An . . . an . . . an .

A ripple passed through it, so that for a moment it looked like a piece of washing hung out on a line. I was reminded, grotesquely, of how kids pretend to be ghosts by draping sheets over themselves.

‘Who killed you?’ I demanded, cutting to the chase. ‘Who was with you in the car?’

The ghost’s desolate gaze travelled along the length of its right arm, starting at the wrist and finishing at the shoulder; then on down its hacked and sliced torso.

‘Oh,’ it murmured brokenly. ‘I didn’t - I couldn’t - He’s too big now and he made me—’

‘Kenny—’ I said, but its head snapped up suddenly to fix me with a pleading, agonised stare.

‘Castorrrrrrrrr!’ it shrilled.

‘Shrilled’ is the wrong word: there was nothing behind that voice to push it up the register either in pitch or in volume. It was a broken fingernail making a forlorn pilgrimage across a blackboard without end.

Kenny broke into pieces, shattered by the note of his own grief and pain. Abruptly I was alone again, apart from the hideous echoes of that sound, clawing their blind, blunted way around my brain.

I lurched to my feet, groped for the bolt on the door and found it, stumbled out into the corridor as though I was a ghost myself, breaking free from my own tomb. My heart was hammering arrhythmically and my body was drenched in sweat. I leaned against the wall as the sweat cooled and the hammering slowed.

I went back to the ward, my feet shaky enough to require two further stops.