Love In The Wrong Dimension (Romantic Ghost Story) (13 page)

She grinned happily at a couple of punks strolling past her. She loved Camden, with its eccentric shops and equally eccentric shoppers. As she strolled idly past a shop selling alternative style clothing, her eyes were drawn to a gorgeous black corset style top hanging in the window. It was lovely, exactly the type of top she loved, but she couldn’t really afford to buy clothes right now – maybe after her first payday though... She was about to turn and walk away, when a voice inside her head screamed –
buy it, buy it
. It wouldn’t do any harm to go in and have a closer look, she thought, although she really didn’t need another top, and anyway, twenty five quid was too much. But it was a
really
nice top. Oh, what the hell, making up her mind, she smiled at the girl behind the counter as she asked to try the top on.

By the time she got back to her flat, laden with ingredients for tonight’s dinner, a couple of bottles of wine and the top, she was exhausted. She wished she could tell Jemma about her interview. She would have loved Oscar, and she would also have loved the top she had so impulsively decided to buy. She wasn’t sure why she had bought that top when she knew she couldn’t afford it, although she was glad she did. It was almost as if Jemma had been with her, telling her to buy it, but of course that was ridiculous, although it was a comforting thought.

She absently pushed the kitchen door open with her foot, and was about to put the shopping bags down, when something made her look up. To her
horror, she saw the young boy she had seen before, standing right in front of her. She dropped the bags and stared at the strange boy in stunned disbelief. A scream formed in her throat, but nothing came out. It was as if someone had pressed a mute button, leaving her powerless to move or make a sound. She just stood, frozen, trying to work out how he had got in, and if he meant her any harm, whilst not taking her eyes off him for a second.

“
Who the hell are you and how did you get into my flat?” she asked, shakily, when she finally got her voice back.

The boy continued to stare silently at her, and Alice felt compelled to stare back, as if she was under some sort of spell. She felt like she was in a trance, unable to move or speak, no longer in control of her actions. She could feel her body tingling, as if some sort of energy was probing her, searching for something inside her, demanding her compliance. As Alice stared helplessly at the boy, she noticed that his skin appeared almost transparent and his blue eyes were so bright that they were radiating a light that seemed to bore deep into her soul. The room felt cold, unnaturally cold, and Alice shivered as she became more aware of the intense silence surrounding her.

“
Alice
,” a voice whispered, softly. Although the boy had not moved his lips, she knew it had been him who had spoken. How did he know her name?

But before she was able to respond, a loud, shrill noise thundered through the silence making her jump, and instantly broke the spell. Alice glanced over at the ringing phone briefly, and then quickly returned her gaze to the boy. But he had gone. He just vanished, one minute he was there, a split second later, he was gone.

Deeply shaken, her earlier excitement was now replaced with fear. It had been one thing seeing the boy in a garden or tube train, but it took on a whole new level when he appeared in her flat, and even knew her name. This was obviously no ordinary boy, the way he had disappeared meant that he must have been some sort of apparition. Was he a ghost? Probably, but why on earth was he following her? She had the distinct impression that he had been about to communicate with her, but why?

The phone had fallen silent again, and Alice was left standing in the kitchen, alone and diffident, unsure about what had just happened. If it had happened at all. Had she just imagined the whole thing? It had felt so real and yet.....

She sank down into a chair, the shopping bags forgotten, and stared blankly at the empty space where the boy had been standing, trying to calm herself down. With shaking hands, she picked up the phone and dialled Jack’s number. She needed to hear his reassuring voice.

“
Hello, you,” his voice smiled through the earpiece, “I just tried to call you.”

“
Oh, it was you.” Alice’s voice broke into a sob.

“
Hey, are you okay?”

“
Yes.... No. Jack? Can I come over?” Suddenly she didn’t want to be alone. She needed to get out of the flat, and, more than anything, she needed to be with Jack.

“
Of course you can. That’s why I was calling. I stayed up half the night finishing those articles, so I could ask if you fancied coming over for lunch?”

Half an hour later, Alice was sitting in Jack’s kitchen, tightly clutching a mug of tea, and telling him about the ghostly boy, from the very first time she had seen him outside his kitchen window, to her frightening encounter with him this morning.

“
I didn’t imagine it, Jack, he was right there in front of me,” she finished, suddenly worried that he may think she was going mad and had imagined the whole thing. Or he might think she was an attention seeking drama queen, who made up wild stories to get sympathy.

But Jack took her hand in his, looked her straight in the eye and gently said, “Hey, of course I believe you. It does sound as though the boy is trying to communicate with you,” he said, thoughtfully, as he finished preparing a delicious looking chicken Caesar salad. “There’s another psychic meeting on Wednesday, why don’t you mention it to the group then? Someone else may have had a similar experience and be able to offer some advice.”

Anyone else would probably have laughed at her and run a mile, but not Jack. She leant forward and kissed him gently.

“
Oh my god!” she cried, suddenly remembering her exciting news. “I completely forgot to tell you. I’ve got a job. I went for an interview this morning and it was amazing.....”

*****

Jemma sat watching Alice and Jack eating their lunch, whilst Alice excitedly told Jack all about her new job. She had listened with curiosity when Alice had spoken off this strange boy who had visited her at the flat. She could have kicked herself for not following Alice home after her interview, but once she had persuaded her to buy that top, she had gone back to Jack’s house. If Alice was seeing, and even hearing ghosts, then why couldn’t she see her? And who was this boy anyway?

She left the two of them to finish their lunch and wandered into the living room. In the corner, as usual, sat the scowling and hostile shadow of Max, and Jemma felt the, now familiar, feeling of unease that she was getting used to experiencing every time she saw him.

“
What do you want?”

She
flinched at the sound of his voice, he sounded so angry. “Nothing,” she said and quickly left the room again. Back in the kitchen with Alice and Jack, she walked over to the window stared out into the garden. She couldn’t forget Max’s hateful words last time they spoke and wondered just how real a threat he was to Tom. She desperately wanted to be alone, to find her own private space she could go to when she wanted a bit of peace and solitude. Even though Tom was out and Susie was watching next door’s TV, the house still felt crowded. She needed to be somewhere away from this house, and the people and ghosts in it. Tom was probably at his beach in Norfolk, so she couldn’t go there – heaven forbid he might think she was stalking him. She needed somewhere of her own, somewhere she could go to when she needed time alone, her own special place.

And then she
remembered a place her mother used to take her when she was a child. Ashdown Forest was a beautiful forest high on a hill in Sussex, where her mother used to take her for picnics in the summer. The views from one particular clearing were out of this world, and on a clear day you could see the planes coming in to land at Gatwick. But best of all, Ashdown Forest was the home of one of her favourite childhood characters, Winnie The Pooh. Her mother would read her favourite Pooh stories to her, lying on a picnic blanket, their bellies full, and afterwards, they would go and find the places they had just read about in the book. As a child she had never quite understood why she never actually got to see the bear or his friends, but her memories of Ashdown Forest were nonetheless magical.

She decided she would go to the clearing with the beautiful views. There used to be a bench which would be the perfect place for her to sit and ponder for a few hours, she hoped it was still there. She turned away from the window and nearly screamed as she came face to face with Max. “Oh.”

He was standing very close to her, close enough for her catch the smell of stale sea water on his clothes, and she felt a spark of fear as his eyes bored into her. “Was there something you wanted?” she asked, trying to keep her voice from trembling.

“
No.”

“
Oh. Well, I’ve got to go somewhere. Bye.”

She wanted to get away quickly and turned away from him, ready to vanish, when she heard him say, “I will get my revenge, you know.”

She stopped and turned back to face him. “Pardon?”

“
Revenge. One way or the other, Tom will pay for what happened to me.”

“
Why Tom? He hasn’t done anything wrong.”

Max laughed, a dark, malevolent snarl
. “He’s a fucking Cresswell and that makes him guilty. Make no mistake, he will pay, one way or another. When he’s least expecting it, I’ll be there. I’ve been biding my time, I’m just waiting for my moment and it will come, just you see.”

Jemma had had enough, she needed to get away,
now. Closing her eyes, she imagined herself in the heart of Ashdown forest and, in a fraction of a second, she was there, leaving Max behind at the house. Walking slowly along the muddy path, she was glad it was such bad weather. The icy wind and relentless rain meant she had the place to herself, and it wasn’t long before she was lost in her thoughts, her solitary figure throwing the occasional ghostly shadow against the trees as she walked silently along the muddy track.

Max’s outburst had unsettled her and she felt restless and troubled.
Her mind was flitting from one thought to another, Tom, Susie, Alice, Max. What was she going to do about Max and his threat to Tom? She had already told Tom what he had said, but he had just laughed and said that if Max was going to do something, he would have done it a long time ago. And then of course, there were her feelings for Tom, feelings that were growing stronger every day. And, if she did manage to persuade Susie to leave with her, he would be left alone with Max. Did she really want to return to a life without Tom?

And then there was Alice and the mysterious boy. Why was a ghost following her, and trying to talk to her? Could she be in any danger?

Deep in thought, she didn’t notice the solitary woman sitting on the bench when she got to the clearing. It was only when she turned to approach the bench that she saw she wasn’t alone. Even in the pouring rain, the woman was dry, like herself, and her hair remained perfectly still as the strong wind rushed past her. She was obviously a ghost, which meant that the lady would be able to see her. Sighing, she turned around to walk away, resigned to finding another quiet spot, when the lady spoke.

“
Don’t mind me,” she said, softly, “there’s plenty of room for both of us.”

“
I don’t want to intrude,” replied Jemma, keen to get back to her thoughts.

“
You’re not. To be honest, I’d be glad of a bit of company. It gets a bit lonely up here, day in and day out.”

“
Are you here all the time then?” asked Jemma, curiously, as she sat down next to the lady and looked at her. She had the saddest eyes she had ever seen – troubled and lonely.

“
I’ve got nowhere else to go. So, how long have you been here, dear?”

“
Oh, not long. About ten minutes.”

The lady smiled, “I didn’t mean
here
, I meant, how long have you been dead?”

“
Oh! Sorry. It must be
over two months now. What about you?”

“
I died in 1937”, the lady
sighed, sadly. “Robert, that’s my husband, and I had agreed to meet here, at this very spot, when we eventually died. We promised that we’d find each other again in the next world, and we’d spend the rest of eternity watching the sun setting from this bench.”

“
That’s so romantic,” said
Jemma, who loved a good love story. “So what happened? Where’s Robert now?”

“
He died about five years after me. But he didn’t come, he went somewhere else, but I don’t know where.” She sighed again, staring wistfully out across the trees before turning to face Jemma. “It had never occurred to us that we’d end up in different places. He’s gone and I’m here, alone, and I don’t know why.”

“
Haven’t you tried to find out?” asked Jemma, remembering her own refusal to accept her fate when she had first arrived.

“
I just sit here and wait for Robert, hoping that one day he’ll let me know what to do.”

Jemma’s heart went out to this desolate and lonely woman. She smiled at her sympathetically, admiring the way thick silver streaks contrasted so dramatically with her nearly black hair. She was probably in her late fifties, petite and delicate looking, and was smartly dressed in a 1930’s style dress.

“
I don’t know why I’m here either,” said Jemma, “but I’m trying to find out. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t meant to die, and I plan to leave here one day, when I’ve worked out how to use a wormhole. When I’ve figured it out, I’ll help you if you like?”