Dance of Ghosts

30

It was close to midnight when we got to the pet shop. We’d parked the van in a side street, walked round in circles for a while, and by the time we’d cut through a narrow cobbled lane that brought us out onto Market Street, I was fairly sure that we weren’t being followed.

Market Street was quiet.

There was no one around.

As Bridget unlocked the pet-shop door, I kept looking up and down the street, but there was no sign of life anywhere. Away in the distance, I could hear the wail of an ambulance siren. It was getting closer, coming this way, and I guessed it was heading for Wyre Street.

‘All right?’ Bridget said to me.

I looked at her. She’d unlocked the door and was about to go in.

‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘Let Walter in first.’

She opened the door and let Walter in. We waited a few moments, but Walter didn’t make any noise, and when he padded back to the doorway, picked up a copy of the Gazette from the floor, and stood there with it hanging from his mouth, wagging his tail at us, I reckoned it was safe to go in.

Bridget took the newspaper from his mouth and we went inside. It was dark, but there was enough light coming in from the streetlights outside to see that everything seemed normal — the fish tanks bubbling softly, hamsters scurrying around, mice nibbling quietly on cardboard tubes.

‘Is there a back door?’ I asked Bridget as she locked the door behind us.

‘Yeah, but we never use it. It’s all bolted up.’

‘I’d better check it anyway.’

‘It’s round the back of the storeroom,’ she said. ‘Down that little hallway, on your left.’

I clicked on my penlight and went out through the storeroom into the hallway. The back door was a solid old thing, locked and bolted at the top and bottom, and I could tell from its covering of dusty cobwebs that it hadn’t been opened in years. I went back down the hallway and met Bridget coming into the storeroom.

‘Look at this,’ she said, passing me the Gazette.

A photograph on the front page showed me cracking my elbow into the photographer’s face. Just behind me — in the background, but clearly visible — was Bridget. The headline read STACY’S HUSBAND LASHES OUT, and beneath that, in smaller writing, INJURED PHOTOGRAPHER DROPS CHARGES.

‘Shit,’ I said, beginning to read the story.

‘Is it all right if I put the lights on now?’ Bridget asked.

‘Yeah, I don’t see why not.’

As she put the light on and started climbing the stairs to the flat, Walter trotted past her and lolloped up to the landing. ‘Come on, John,’ Bridget said. ‘You can read that later. It’s all just newspaper shit anyway.’

She was right, most of the story seemed to be just the same old rehashed rubbish, but that didn’t stop me reading it as I followed her up the stairs. When I got to the third paragraph and saw that the reporter had included both Bridget’s full name and where she worked, I didn’t realise what it meant at first. I wasted precious seconds by stopping on the stairs to read through the paragraph again, angrily shaking my head and cursing under my breath, and only then did it occur to me that if Ray Bishop had read this, he’d not only know about Bridget and me, he’d also know about the pet shop …

I looked up and saw that Bridget had reached the landing and was just about to open the sitting-room door.

‘Bridget!’ I called out. ‘Hold on! Don’t go in …’

But I was too late. She’d already begun opening the door. She paused at the sound of my voice, turning round to look at me, but Walter had already slipped through the gap in the doorway, and even as I called out again — ‘Don’t go into the sitting room!’ — we both heard a startled bark, followed almost immediately by a muffled thump and a short pitiful yelp. Bridget didn’t hesitate, she just barged open the door and went rushing in, and I knew there was nothing I could do to stop her.

‘Bridget!’ I yelled, pulling the pistol from my pocket as I bounded up the stairs. ‘Bridget!’

I heard another dull thump from inside the room, and then a heavier sound, the sound of a body hitting the floor. And I should have stopped then … I should have stopped running, stopped shouting, stopped raging. I should have stopped to think. But I couldn’t. My mind had gone back in time, to a hot summer’s day seventeen years ago, and I was running up the stairs again, and my heart was pounding, and I was shouting at the top of my voice, ‘Stacy! STACY! STACY!’, and the whole world was humming inside my head as I crossed the landing and crashed through the open door, and there she was …

Bridget.

Not Stacy.

Bridget.

She was lying on the floor, just to the right of the doorway. Her eyes were closed and she was bleeding from the corner of her mouth. A few feet beyond her, Walter was splayed out on his side against the wall. The top of his skull was split open, a bone-white furrow showing through the bloodied fur, and his staring eyes were dull and lifeless.

I saw all this in a timeless moment.

Just before my head exploded.

And then there was nothing.