Strange Dominions: a collection of paranormal short stories (short story books) (2 page)

“I thought you’d died in the fire.”

“I would have if mom and dad hadn’t sent me to stay with my gran on the day it happened.”

“I kept visiting from time to time, but when I heard that you’d all died I stopped. There are so many things I have to ask you that I don’t know where to begin.”

“And there are a lot of things that I have to tell you, but this isn’t the right place,” he said, having become aware of the attention he was drawing to himself, “I think we need to find somewhere a little more private.”

As they walked toward the city park, they talked of the night they first met, and of the years of their friendship. Learning that he had become a fire fighter didn’t come as much of a surprise to Little Ears, given his history. What did surprise her, however, was when he told her he had learned at the age of ten that she was no elf, but a spirit.

“But why didn’t you tell me you knew?”

“Well I wasn’t sure whether
you
knew, and I didn’t want to shock you,” he replied.

“Do you still have that old fire engine you used to play with?”

“Oh, that’s long gone. I have a real one to play with nowadays.”

As they entered the park Jamie asked, “Do you know the greatest gift I got on the night we met?”

“Wasn’t it the fire engine?”

“No. It was the gift
you
gave me when we touched.”

Little Ears was puzzled.

“It’s because of that gift that I can help you move on, Ellen.”

She stopped dead In her tracks. “What did you call me?”

Jamie pulled up. “Your real name is Ellen Carter. You were born on December the ninth, nineteen seventy and died under tragic circumstances in November of nineteen ninety, after running away from home two years earlier.”

“All this happened because I was a runaway?”

“No. There’s more to it than that. You were running from something you couldn’t face up to or deal with. You had a serious drug addiction.”

“I was a drug addict?”

“I know you might find that hard to take, given that you no longer suffer from withdrawal symptoms, but once you left your physical body that was to be expected. Running away from home only worsened the situation. Without guidance and help you drifted into crime and other unpleasantness in order to feed your addiction. What I’m telling you I learned from surviving family members and newspaper reports.”

“You’ve spoken to my parents? Where do they live? How are they?”

“I’m afraid both your parents passed over several years ago. The majority of what I’ve learned is from your brother and sisters. Your mother died less than a year after your death and your father three years later.”

Little Ears looked him squarely in the eyes. “Was that because of me?” she asked.

Jamie tried to evade the question. “Does that really matter now?”

“Yes it does!”

“In the case of your father, not so much,” he said.

“And my mother?”

“Well, according to your siblings she died of a broken heart, bu-”

“Please, just don’t try to sugar coat it, James!” she cut in, angrily, “If I did such terrible things then I don’t deserve to move on.”

“And I’m supposed to tell your parents this, am I?”

“You’ve spoken to them?”

Little Ears seemed genuinely surprised by the news.

“What - you think you’re the only spirit I can communicate with? Of course I’ve talked with them. They’re waiting for you as we speak!”

Jamie took a calming breath before continuing.

“Look, the only reason you’re still here is because you’re punishing yourself for what you did. The trauma of your death and the heartache you brought upon your family were just too painful for you and so you wiped them from your memory. But there’s a small part of you that still seeks forgiveness and peace.”

Seeing her demeanour was calmer, he motioned her to follow, leading her deeper into the park.

“Tell me how many spirits you see in the park,” he instructed.

“There aren’t any. Just me.”

“If you could see with my eyes you’d know how wrong you are. There are actually quite a few.”

“Then why can’t I see them?”

“For the same reason they don’t see you or any of the others for that matter. It’s part of the torment they believe they must endure for their earthly sins. The truth is they’re no more in purgatory than I am. What they’re experiencing is a kind of mental projection created by their own minds.”

“But you’re real, this city’s real, what’s happening is real, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is, but you and others like you are stuck between two worlds; this one and the next level of existence. There are several realms a spirit must visit before it can enter into heaven. Each one serves as a cleansing process for the soul. Those who have led a relatively blameless life can sometimes skip those realms that have nothing to teach them.”

“How do you know all this?”

“The gift you gave me eventually enabled me to speak with my spirit guide, and it’s through him that I learned these things, and also where to find you. I’ve helped many lost souls pass over into the light because of it.”     

“Is that why you’re here now; to help me cross over?”

“Yes. I think you’ve suffered enough Little Ears. But first you have to witness the things you’ve been running from all these years. Don’t be afraid of what you see. They’ll seem very real to you, but they’re only distant memories.”

As they resumed their walk, Jamie announced, “We’re almost there.”

Little Ears could feel a panic welling up inside her. “Where are you taking me?”

“To the place of your death,” he replied.

They walked in silence until they reached a grove. Ahead of them, a cinder track branched off into the trees.

Jamie came to a halt. “We’re here,” he said, pointing to a small brick building at the end of the track.

“A public toilet? I died in a toilet?” Little Ears gasped.

Jamie nodded. “You won’t be disturbed by anyone. They were closed down a couple of years back?”

Reluctantly, she moved toward the derelict building, then suddenly realised Jamie wasn’t following.

“Aren’t you coming with me?”

“I can’t,” he said, “The place is locked up. Only you can enter.”

“But I don’t think I can do this on my own.”

He smiled at her reassuringly. “You have to be brave, Little Ears. All you’ll see is a reflection of your passing – the unveiling of a suppressed memory, and nothing more.”

After a few brief moments she turned her back on him and walked into the grove, passing through the dank cold walls and into the interior.

*****

On entering, she felt the cold penetrating damp and began to shiver. Being in spirit form meant that she would normally have been impervious to the physical effects of the natural world. Yet, there was no denying the evidence of her own eyes and senses. She was shivering uncontrollably and goose bumps had appeared on her bare arms.

A large, rectangular skylight, let in the orange glow from the cinder trail lights outside, affording little illumination. Ahead of her lay four cubicles. Their doors were open. They were empty. As she approached she caught the unpleasant smell of stale urine. She walked tentatively toward the first cubicle.

Crack!

Something gave way beneath her foot. She looked down to see a broken tile.

Fear began to reassert itself.

“It’s just an illusion, Ellen,” she reminded herself, “nothing more than an illusion.”

Then came the unexpected sound of sobbing.

Her skin crawled as though a thousand insects were scurrying across her body, and she shuddered. She stood, frozen to the spot.

The pitiable weeping was now more than she could bear.
“Please stop!”
she cried out, holding her hands to her ears.

But there was no respite from the sounds and visions inside her head. She was beginning to remember.

A sharp stinging pain in the crook of her arm made her wince, followed quickly by the tinkle of glass on the tiled floor as a bloodied syringe rolled from the furthest cubicle.

The pitiable crying suddenly ceased.

One moment she had been standing in a dilapidated toilet, staring down at the instrument of her death. The next, she was in the back of a brightly lit ambulance as it hurtled through the city streets, looking on as the medics struggled to save her.

This was the first time in years she had seen her full countenance, and it appalled her. What she saw had little in common with an eighteen-year-old. Emaciation and years of self-abuse had taken their toll.

“My God! What have I done to myself?” she murmured, “How could I let myself sink so low?”

Suddenly, the monitor she was attached to began to beep loudly.

“Christ, we’re losing her!” the attending medic called out to his partner.

In the blinking of an eye, Little Ears found herself hurtling through a dark tunnel toward the sound of childish laughter. She exited into broad daylight, recognising instantly the group of teenagers congregating around an ice-cream van outside the school gates, the place where it all began.

She also recognised the cocky eighteen-year-old ice-cream vendor, with the shock of curly red hair that ran to his shoulders. His liking for young girls was well-known to those who had fallen for his obvious charms. They were drawn to him like moths to a flame.

Capitalising on his notoriety, in ways his employers were unaware of, he supplemented his meagre wage by selling small wraps of cannabis to his more than willing customers. Like many of her peers, Little Ears was about to be seduced into his web of deceit.

As the group drifted back into the school yard only one female remained. Little Ears watched as they chatted for a while before he eventually served her. Though she could not recall the exact details of the conversation, she knew that he’d made a date to meet her at the local carnie that weekend. It was a rendezvous that would alter her life in ways she could never have imagined at the time: she would become a woman and smoke her first ‘joint’ at the age of fifteen.

She wondered if she had known back then of her addictive nature whether she would have taken him up on his offer, but she hadn’t and there was no way of turning back the clock.

Moving forward through time on an emotional journey of sadness and regret, she witnessed her first run in with the law, the anguish of her parents, the rows and upsets she caused within the family, the lies and deceit, and her increasing need to find a better ‘buzz’, and the debasing lengths she went to in order to attain it.

Though remorseful of her acts, she no longer hated herself, and understood for the first time that she had been the victim of the greed of others and her own adolescent immaturity. Weakened by her dependency, she could not overcome her addiction as she grew into adulthood.

Now she had to return to the place of her death to witness her ultimate act of selfishness.

In the half-light of the toilet, blinking the tears from her eyes, she stared at the empty syringe lying at her feet, then into the cramped cubicle where her inert body lay wedged between the toilet bowl and wall. Round her left arm was a tourniquet. Directly beneath it a rivulet of blood tricked down from the collapsed vein where the needle had been inserted, and suddenly she remembered the terrible choice she had made.

She sank to her knees and wept.

Looking up through the skylight she begged,  “Please forgive me! I just want to go home now!”

A sudden burst of radiant light cut through the darkness, warming her face. It was intensely bright yet did not hurt her eyes. An overwhelming feeling of love reached out to her from within, calling her, bidding her to follow. Then slowly she began to ascend.

Jamie looked on at the delicate, golden lit form as it rose into the heavens, to be lost amid the pyrotechnic display.

As he made his way along the cinder track a familiar voice whispered out to him, “Thank you, James.”

He smiled. Pulling up his collar against the cold he whispered, “Happy New Year, Little Ears.”

The Cormorant was an enduring mystery to the folk of Stanelaw, in northeast England. For more than twenty years the derelict fishing trawler had sat on common ground, miles from the nearest port or harbour or, for that matter, the sea. Time and neglect had taken their toll on the ageing craft, its sun bleached timbers and buttressed hull starkly contrasting the lushness of its surroundings.

Its keeper, ‘Mad Pedi’, was also something of a mystery to the village children and the subject of much speculation as to whether it was she who was seen roaming its deck in the dead of night or some frightening phantom laying in wait for those foolhardy enough to enter its domain. Whatever the truth, none dared visit the site after sunset.

But Tommy Brice, unlike his young peers, was not so intimidated by the old woman. His most recent run-in with her had resulted in a serious loss of face for the fourteen-year-old, making him more determined to circumvent her ongoing vigil. To that end, he had come up with an audacious plan.

An impenetrable fog had rendered his torchlight almost ineffectual as he stumbled through the early morning brume with his classmate Sarah Elliot and his new-found friend, Robbie Lewis, in tow.

Sarah, who had been happy enough to go along with his scheme, was now entertaining serious misgivings. That she had snuck from her bed at such an ungodly hour and had risked the wrath of her parents was bad enough, but now it appeared they had bypassed the boat altogether and were hopelessly lost in a peasouper.

Robbie pulled up short, his cry echoing through the early morning stillness as out of the grey shroud the forbidding sight of the boat’s mouldering hull loomed suddenly into view. Perched against it was the self-same ladder ‘Mad Pedi’ had confiscated from Tommy and Sarah the previous day. It seemed that the crude grappling iron Tommy had so painstakingly fashioned was no longer required.

Sarah was nonplussed, “How’d that get there?”