J. H. Sked Page 5

  When he realized she was looking back at him, he started, looking hastily away. She lowered her head back to the page, the few freckles on her broad curved cheekbones fading as the colour swept over them.

  As the train hissed into the station with an exhalation of dry hot breath, she glanced up at him once more, then smiled.

  Phan boarded the car behind her. He spent the rest of the commute staring into his folded hands, replaying the vivid flash of indigo eyes.

  Back home, grandfather had cooked, a hamburger each with a bottle of soda gathering dew in the fridge.

  “After forty years,” Phan said, shaking his head, “You’d think you’d get over this infatuation with junk food?”

  Grandfather cackled.“I’ll get over junk food when you get over your fixation with blondes!”

  Phan rose to stack the dishes in the sink. The old man watched the boy-child he had raised move gracefully around the cramped space.

  “Did you talk to this one, then?”

  Phan plunged his hands into the steaming water, watching them redden in the heat., “I don’t know what you are talking about,” he hissed.

  Grandfather opened his mouth, but Phan held up a hand.

  “Nor do I want to.” His tone making the other subside silently into his chair.

  Grandfather regarded Phan’s hand. The golden flesh ended abruptly at the wrist, became an angry red glove steamed by the water.

  ‘Too much like your heart, my little one.’

  But he said no more.

  Two

  Phan saw her several times over the next few weeks, always in the evening press of homeward-bound office drones.

  Although he could never bring himself to speak, they’d nod towards each other as they waited in the dankness of the station platform. Usually, she smiled at him with her indigo eyes, her red-blonde hair.

  He wept when he first saw her face in the paper.

  Her name had been Emily Jane Ramsey, Janey to her friends. Single, not quite twenty-three, working as an office clerk.

  Phan went through the rest of the day an animated puppet, stiff and jerky as he tried to equate the girl who had smiled at him on the Piccadilly platform with the headline above her photograph: THIRD SUICIDE ON MAJOR LINE THIS YEAR.

  No, he thought. No and, no and, no.

  Three

  A week later, he stood on the platform, the urge to glance at people - even absently - gone.

  A glimpse of red-blonde made his stomach whimper. He turned away from her, not wishing to see the way she nibbled hair as she turned a page.

  Yet, he slowly turned back towards her; his mind turning to ice.

  Janey lifted her head and smiled at him. Closing her book, she began to walk towards him.

  He could hear her heels clicking on the tiles.

  He raised his hands, unseen by the press jostling around him as the train approached. Someone pushed by him as the metal tube belched explosively into view. When he regained his balance she was gone.

  That was Monday.

  The next two nights passed without a sign of her – not that Phan searched the platform too hard. He would stand, his nose pressed stubbornly against the sheet of newsprint held like a shield.

  If he felt eyes on him, he ignored them grimly, applying himself to the lines of senseless print until the blessed rocket hurtled him away from the station.

  On Wednesday he was proceeding onto the platform when he saw her. He halted in mid-step, forcing a large, middle-aged woman to skip daintily around him.

  She had her back to him, the ever-present book tucked beneath one arm. There were strange marks on the back of her light blue dress, just above her waist.

  Is she looking for me?

  Phan felt the ice gather low in his belly once more. The woman in blue began to turn, and he sprinted back up the steps, taking them two at a time.

  He went and stood at the bus stop, shaking.

  No, and no, and no!

  Four

  There are ways to travel around London without using the tube, if you don’t mind adding at least an hour to your time by riding the bus, or by spending a small fortune on taxis.

  It took weeks to realize he could catch a bus to the station just before Piccadilly. It added fifteen minutes to his commute, but that was better time than an hour.

  As the blur through the windows resolved into Piccadilly Station, he caught himself sidling away from the windows, staring out of the dirty glass, and immediately he felt his gut lurch.

  There she was there, in her blue dress, slender fingers tapping anxiously against her book. Beside her stood a plump, middle-aged lady with a home perm.

  Phan groaned and passed a shaking hand over his eyes. When he looked again, Janey was staring directly at him, indigo eyes trailing wet diamonds that clung briefly to her lashes before rolling slowly down her face.

  .

  The middle-aged woman turned and looked reproachfully in his direction, placing a hand upon Janey’s shoulder, even as she tucked an oddly streaked jacket under her free arm.

  Phan sank against the seat as the doors hissed shut and train sped up.

  A contemptuous snort caused him to look up. A cocoa-skinned teenager with dreadlocks shook his head slowly at him, strands of hair swinging across features almost too pretty to be male.

  A dirty smudge on the shirt, looking like a deformed starfish, obscured an image of Bob Marley.

  Phan stared, feeling the stirrings of something. His mind was trying to make a connection, groping for a light switch in a blacked-out room.

  …this boy, the plump woman with the perm, Janey…

  “Are you getting this yet, bro?” The boy eyed him. The carriage lights flickered, and buzzed irritably, and then went out completely.

  “What?” Phan stammered. “What?”

  When the lights flicked back on, the boy was gone.

  Five

  It was Phan’s turn to cook. He edged into the flat and placed the Macdonald’s bag on the counter.

  His grandfather watched, as he unpacked the coloured containers.

  “Yours has extra cheese.”Phan slid the box towards him.

  “Bribery, then?”

  Phan grunted, prodding his bun unenthusiastically.

  “Are you going to eat that, or ask me what you want to know?” Grandfather’s empty container slid back towards him.

  Phan pushed his own untouched food towards the other man. He rose and wandered over to the window, resting his forehead against the glass. It was cool against the heat of his face.

  “I’m being haunted.” His words misting against the window.

  There was a snort from behind him. “And this is news?”

  “I’m serious, damn it!”

  “So am I.”

  Phan turned to glare at his grandfather. The wall lamp caught the grey stubble around his mouth, the age-wattles that creased his neck and face like a carelessly bunched napkin.

  “What do you mean?”

  Grandfather sighed.“What I mean, is that you are the most haunted man I know - and I’ve known a few. You are haunted by her every moment you are awake, and most nights when you should be dreaming.”

  For a moment Phan thought he meant Janey. He stiffened as the truth sank in. But the old man carried on, knowing that he would be unable to unsay what he was about to finally put in words after eight years.

  “When was the last time you put on a shirt, without wondering if she would’ve liked it, or bought a book she would not have borrowed from you? You do not cook what she would not have approved of; you fear changing the job you worked when you met her.”

  Grandfather shook his head, feeling the first tear on his cheek. “You do not walk down the street without your dead wife beside you, holding your hand. If you are seeing ghosts, my child, it is because you have become one yourself.”

  Six

  Phan wobbled down the steps at Piccadilly Station.

  At just past six o’clock, London stirred,
a restless corpse, a vampire suffering from nightmares. Phan’s movements were jerky, uncoordinated. The tapping heels echoing as loudly as the old man’s voice in his head.

  "When the dead cannot release the living, there is always a reason - always."

  Grandfather scowls emphatically.

  "Sometimes it is love."

  An unsteady heel caught on the stairs. Phan slipped and clawed at the handrail. A long red-painted nail peeled back and fluttered to the concrete.

  The rapid tattoo of his passing could have been his heartbeat, the sardonic applause of his life.

  "Sometimes they are seeking justice."

  He peered into the blind eye of the convex mirror before stepping around the corner.

  The distorted surface showed him, all black rimmed eyes and bleeding mouth. Phan looked away, adjusted the hem of the little black cocktail dress, and proceeded onto the platform. The clumsiness was gone now.

  He drifted the length of the platform, feeling the sensuality of silk stockings sliding across skin.

  The platform was empty, but there would be someone along soon. There always was.

  "Often, it is the only revenge they can take."

  Had she felt like this, his wife, as she waited for the train to carry her home to her husband? Had she smelled the scent of her own perfume, or had the reek of illicit sex been overpowering? Had she smiled that little cat smile, sharp and knowing, the little black dress and the high, high heels glossy with the patina of lust?

  Phan sat down on the bench, demurely crossed the long, shapely legs, and began to search through the little clasp bag. Frowning, he searched again. And again.

  He buried his head in his hands.

  “No,” he whispered. “NononoNONO!”

  A whisper of satin, and the black gloves slid over his shoulder and slithered into his lap.

  Phan froze into stillness, into marble, into glass. He dared not look around.

  “You left them on your pillow,” Grandfather whispered.

  He raised the material and rubbed it gently against his cheek. They were elbow length, almost impossible to replace. It had taken months to find them; the ones she had been wearing – like everything else – fit for nothing but burning once the train had spat what was left against the screaming rail.

  “You never asked me, Phan, the one question you should have.”

  “What happens?” Phan’s voice was husky. He closed his eyes and continued, and whether it was aloud or in his own mind, neither would ever be truly sure of.

  “What happens, Grandfather, when the living cannot release the dead?”

  The old lips brush against young flesh, a last caress between winter and summer.

  “Madness. A twisting of what never was into what should never be.”

  Grandfather walked slowly to the front of the bench, and sat down, and neither looked at the other.

  “This ends now, grandson.”

  “Yes.”

  Phan extended both hands before him, fingers spread. They looked like the petals of an exotic black rose, like a dark sun.

  Like a starfish.

  The rails below began to thrum, and Phan rose, automatically smoothing the material down.

  “They’re waiting for me.”

  Grandfather stared at his feet, and listened to the heels click steadily away. They did not hesitate, even as the train spilled into the station with a squealing of brakes and outraged sparks.

  Eventually, as the paramedics made their way down to the platform, the old man stood up. He did not look at the stilled machine, the frantic rushing of canvas and wheels, the useless weeping of the driver.

  “She was a bad woman,” he whispered to his unseen audience. “I thought he would see that. I thought I was protecting him.”

  He shuffled his way back along the length of the platform, wincing occasionally. When he reached the first flight of stairs he sighed, remembering the slight give of flesh beneath silk, and the way she had spun like a black moth in the headlight of the train.

  “But what do old men know, anyway. She was a bad, bad woman. And she wore way too much perfume.”

  After awhile, he started to climb.

  Read on for an excerpt of WolfSong, available on Kindle now.

  Chapter 1

  Kristan died on a beautiful summer afternoon, with the scent of crushed grass and her own blood filling the air around her.

  She died snapping and growling, unable to reach the hands clamped around her throat, unfeeling from the neck down where they had swung the silver nail into her spine.

  As she spiralled into darkness she fell into the only spell she knew; the one piece of true magic that every clan member learned before they could walk. Her family’s darkest gift to her, a legacy from the times of madness - and one no clansman ever wished to use – but use it they would, if left no choice.

  My Lady of Darkness, come to me now. Grant me this last gift.

  The only hope she had of vengeance, the slightest chance that her clan would trace her last movements through the havoc she was about to let loose, and sing her Death Song for her.

  Mother of Shadows, fill me now. Grant me the ebony veil, that I may dance them with me into darkness.

  The Goddess heard her prayer, and answered it well.

  Chapter 2

  “After summat, Ricky?”She smiled up at him, pursing her lips to blow a strand of hair away from her face.

  “Naw, tai Anna. Do you need any help?” He gestured at the table his aunt was labouring over, already piled high with the morning’s baking.

  “Away with ye, lad! This is for Feast Day, needs to be done right.” She smiled at him to take the sting away. “Ye’ll never make a baker, lad, for all yer trying!”

  Ricky shrugged, smiling back at her.

  “There be some of yesterday’s bread on the shelf there, if ye’ve not broken yer fast yet,” she indicated with a toss of her head.

  She doubted he had; Dakron couldn’t be bothered to feed the boy at the best of times, and he’d spent the last two days drunker than usual. There’d be no food in her brother’s house.

  “My thanks,” he smiled at her sweetly and strode over to the shelf, the peg-leg thumping at every other step.

  “It’s a fine day,” she said, kneading at the dough on the table as she watched him from the corner of her eye. “You should go and play a bit.”

  Ricky snorted softly to himself, but nodded. “My thanks for the food, tai,” he said, ducking his head as he left the kitchen.

  He sat with his back against Anna’s kitchen wall, feeling the sun beading his face with little blisters of sweat, and finished the last of the bread before deciding what to do next.

  “Play,” he said, thinking of what his aunt had said. “Sure, and I can kick a ball with the best of them.”

  She had not meant to be cruel, he knew. His aunt was about the only person since his mother died that hadn’t measured his value by the lack of his leg, and found him wanting.

  The boys his own age had little time for him, since he was unable to join their rough and tumble games, and the younger children were nearly as bad as the adults, with their teasing.

  He didn’t even like to think about the girls.