No Room for Ghosts

I didn’t know what would happen if I tried to stop her from taking those first, fatal steps. I wasn’t sure I would be able to, and, if I couldn’t, there was no telling how long it would be until I got another chance.

I wondered whether ghosts replayed at intervals, like a video clip on repeat. Did something trigger them to appear, like drowning people near the diver, or was it simply a coincidence that both times we saw Abigail we’d caught up with her at this point in her re-enactment?

It was pointless to worry now, as if by sifting my thoughts I could tease some new information from my brain.

I had made my decision.

Releasing Leanna, so that, denied my support, she stumbled forward with one arm raised for balance like a dancer something caught in the wind, I dashed towards the road. The sprint was easier this time, because I knew what to expect. I could almost count the seconds left until the collision.

3… 2… 1…

‘Hey!’

I felt more like a creep than a hero, grabbing a little girl on the street. I hoped that in my fervour I wasn’t too rough. My grip on her wrist was slippery because my hands were sweating.

The car screeched past us, its banshee noise stuffing my ears like cotton wool, and I was forced to stand dumbfounded. A second later, it hit an invisible wall, and the sound broke off as suddenly as if somebody had pressed pause. It was gone.

For a moment, we maintained our stunned positions. Then Abigail looked up sharply, regarding me with indignant hurt.

She had definitely been conscious, I concluded. At least, she was awake now. The awareness in her dark eyes bored all the way into my soul, almost startling me into releasing her. She said nothing, only fixing me with that stare, as if she were a thing possessed.

Then, abruptly, the expression melted, and she was an ordinary child again, frustrated at being held.

‘No,’ she wailed, twisting in my grip. ‘There!’ She pointed urgently across the road, where I saw that something silvery was bounding.

A ghost?

I only saw it for an instant, before the bushy tail waved like a flag of surrender and was swallowed by a stormwater drain. Nevertheless, I was almost certain of what it had been. No live animal was that white.

‘Was it a cat?’ I asked, as coaxingly as I could.

With a child’s discernment, the little girl frowned at my condescending voice. ‘No,’ she snapped, combatively.

‘Was it a dog?’ I thought this was less likely.

‘No!’

‘Then, what?’

She folded her arms, now that she was finally free. ‘Oscar lived near my house, but he’s not a cat anymore.’

As far as I was concerned, that settled it, but how could she have seen a ghost before she was one?

‘Were you going to cross the road to catch Oscar?’

In uncanny imitation of Leanna’s wide-eyed gesture, she rolled her eyes. I crouched down on my knees, so that we were on the same level. I’d heard somewhere that you were supposed to do that, so that children would like you more, or listen better, but it didn’t come naturally to me.

‘Your name’s Abigail, isn’t it?’

It struck me that, to an outsider, our conversation would appear even more awkward and stilted than that of two people her own age meeting for the first time. Surely enough, when I glanced around, I caught Leanna stifling what looked to be a fit of laughter.

I hunched up further, tucking one of my knees up to my chest, so that I was curled into a loose ball. In the knowledge that I was an adult, I felt overlarge, as though all my awkwardness had been blown up into comedic proportions. I wanted to shrink, because I was too huge to be effectively timid.

‘Yes…’

Leanna had come over now. She ducked into a more casual, ground-hugging kneel and I shifted my posture to imitate her, poorly.

‘It’s okay, Abigail,’ she said sweetly. ‘Harvey and I are your friends. I’m Leanna.’ She smiled. ‘Where are your parents?’

Sounding less suspicious, the girl replied, ‘At the party.’

‘And why did you leave?’

She shrugged, swinging restlessly from side to side. Stopping mid-arc, she flung out an arm to indicate the direction of the drain. It was like she was introducing a circus act, or about to take a bow. ‘I wanted to go where Oscar went. I saw him.’

‘Okay.’ Leanna nodded, listening. Then her tone became serious. I thought that she was mindful of the time- she kept glancing at the corner, where the car might possibly reappear if we loitered long enough. We couldn’t be sure that it was gone forever. ‘Abby– Can I call you Abbey?’ The girl nodded. ‘You need to understand something.’

She tilted her head curiously.

‘You’re dead,’ I blurted out. I was thinking of the car. ‘You’re a ghost.’

‘Harvey!’ Leanna rounded on me, her cheeks a mortified crimson. ‘You can’t say that!’

‘Why not?’

‘You just can’t!’

Between us, Abigail looked frightened, maybe daunted by the two large adults, one of whom still struggled to conceal his grown-up bulk. Her eyes seemed to flicker between us inquisitorially as we spoke.

‘What am I?’ she demanded.

Leanna sighed, throwing me a final, withering look, as if to say she would deal with me later. ‘Harvey’s telling the truth,’ she admitted. ‘We’re ghosts.’ She gestured at me, and then back at herself.

‘Oh,’ said the little girl.

I thought she was going to burst into tears, or maybe call out for her parents, both of whom she would probably never see again, but something much weirder happened. Her muddled expression smoothed itself into a cool indifference, as though she had been told nothing more significant than an interesting piece of trivia. I should have guessed she would be strange.
‘That sounds fun,’ she remarked. ‘Is it fun?’

‘Sure,’ I shrugged casually, playing along. Leanna rewarded me with another stern glare. ‘Right now, though, we have to get away from here. Some people are looking for us.’

This almost seemed to inspire her. ‘Like hide and seek?’

‘Sort of.’

It was impossible to tell what allowed Abigail to peel off from her past and cement herself to us so easily. Leanna and I certainly hadn’t taken to be ghosts so well, but then... Abigail had been in limbo for longer than we had, and she was much younger. Who knew how much of her family she remembered?

I let my gaze slip into the distance so I could gather my thoughts. It had been a surreal exchange, and only now did the danger of being dissolved seem real again.

We might as well have been sealed inside a bubble. Cars, trucks and buses continued to roar by, but they stretched like taffy, become a shapeless, mechanical conga line, shambling to the fused tunes of horns, rumbling engines, tyres and voices. In the distance, a bell tolled with agonising slowness, so that the stroke of the hour echoed for eternity.

We had snatched a ghost child from a moment in time, and as the result had placed ourselves outside time altogether.