When Love Hurts and Ghosts Linger (8 page)

My friend and I were on a night out one night after a long week at work, we were letting off some steam because we had, had people screaming at us all week, I mean, every job has its downers but when moany customers think its ok to abuse you down the phone and think they are always right when they are wrong then alcohol was needed. 

I was in the loo at the club washing my hands when I looked up to see the mirror freeze over, like your window does in the snow. It cracked as it had become so cold, 
‘no not now’
which is what I always thought when these fuckers were around, but to my surprise, there in the reflection was Jay behind me. 

I turned quickly but he had gone and instead was a little boy, arm missing and a wound to the neck. Nice! Stood in the girl’s bathroom staring at a ghost by the cubicle door. The loos were full as drunken girls came in and out to do what girls do so I didn’t acknowledge him I just turned back to face the mirror.

“Help me….” His innocent voice whispered behind me.

I closed my eyes and counted to ten hoping that when I opened them he would be gone but it didn’t work.

“Please help me, I want my mummy” his voice pierced my heart.

I gave the boy a sort of nod that told him to follow me and I made my way out of the loo and to a store room in the club. I knelt down to his level, you could see the sadness on his face, the tears falling on his grey/blue cheeks and it was heart breaking. This little boy must have been about three and there he was, no arm and a neck wound, I wanted to cry.

“I want my mummy please help me” he begged.

“I don’t know who your mummy is, where are you?” I asked him.

“With the man, its dark and I don’t like it, I want my mummy” he sobbed.

“I can’t help you if you don’t tell me where you are” I pried for information that the others refused to give.

“Robyn….don’t….” a sweet voice behind me whispered.

It was Jay, why was he warning me not to go to this place? Ok yes some scary monster ghost person wanted me for something I didn’t even have yet but these ghosts were in pain and this poor little boy, his mother would have been searching for him if he was missing, not that I knew that he was I mean he could have just died and then been stolen by this thing and even though I tried to avoid them little dead kids got to me and I wanted to help.

“You must stay away!” Jay’s ghostly appearance ordered at me.

“It’s not that simple when you all keep coming after me” I snapped back at him.

Then the door opened and someone came in making them both disappear.

“You ok miss?” the staff asked.

“I’m fine thank you” I smiled politely and left quickly.

I went back to the club where my worried friend was looking for me, she looked at my expression and thought I was a bit pale, well I had just seen two ghosts but I didn’t tell her that, so for that reason we headed on home.

Time went on and I went back and forth the library to see if I could find any information on this ghostly man or maybe something about souls crossing between worlds. 

All I found was the same information over and over about how ghosts wander the earth with unfinished business and blah, blah, it was exhausting, surely I wasn’t the only one with this gift, we had heard of ghost hunters and I had seen that stuff on TV so why did this thing, this monster want me and why could I not find anything on this particular ghost?

I felt a bit weird sat in the library and thought maybe it was because it was too warm for me, you see I don’t like the heat, well, I don’t like being too hot, it seems to overpower me and make me feel a nauseous so I left and went home. 

Pete noticed a change in me and noticed I was looking a bit peaky and red in the face. I certainly didn’t feel very well and we went to the doctors. I thought maybe I had some sort of stomach bug or something, I felt sick and drained like someone had come along with a hoover and sucked all the energy out of me. 

The doctor checked me over and I had to do a urine sample to make sure everything was ok but when he checked it, what he came back with was not what I was expecting. 

I was pregnant. Pete and I had only been together a year or so by this point and I felt it was a bit soon, much too soon. 

I didn’t understand how I had become pregnant when I was on the contraceptive pill but as the doctor explained it was only ninety nine percent effective and sometimes these things could happen. 

Bloody great, as if I didn’t have enough going on in my bloody life at the moment! Pete however seemed happy with the news; it didn’t faze him that this seemed to be happening rather suddenly.

In times like this I went to see my gran, she was always there for me whenever I needed her and even though I had distanced myself from my family, no matter what I could always rely on her to be around. 

When I arrived she knew instantly something was up with me, I always thought she had some sort of sixth sense but it could just have been that we were so close she knew instantly when something inside of me had changed.

“I’m pregnant….” I told her sounding upset.

“Oh my girl that’s wonderful news, but you don’t seem happy” she replied so sincere.

“I don’t know, it’s too soon and there’s just….” I paused; I didn’t want to explain the reasons.

“Oh sweetie it’s ok, I know what you’re going through and I know about your gift but don’t worry everything will be ok….” She smiled softly at me.

“Wait…..you know?” I was shocked.

“I course dear, I’ve known all along and I didn’t agree with your parent’s treatment of it but you got all your memories back now and I’ll be here for you….” She was always so calming.

“Nan, why didn’t you say anything?”

“I couldn’t, I had to let you be you my dear, I knew you would come to me and tell me but seeing how upset you are I gathered this was playing on your mind, and now you have me to lean on about it.”

But the sad fact was she wasn’t going to be there, unfortunately a few months later when I was around five months pregnant, my nanny passed away after suffering a heart attack. 

I was destroyed inside, I felt like I had lost a part of me and I became withdrawn from Pete. It wasn’t intentional of course not I was just deeply distraught by it. I know better than anyone that people don’t live forever but she went before her time. 

At her funeral I remember seeing her next to her casket smiling at me as if to say 
‘I’m ok, don’t cry for me I’m here with you’  
and luckily I never saw her with an arm missing or a neck wound so I believed she was in a better place, but that still didn’t stop the fact that my heart became slightly more broken than when Jay died.

When I needed Pete the most he done something to me I would never be able to forgive him for, I guess when some people tell you they love you they really don’t understand what love is.

I hadn’t even given birth yet but Pete was beginning to act strange, you know, the taking his mobile phone everywhere he went, talking quietly when he was on the phone, spending more time out and about but in all honesty I thought nothing of it at the time.

I had been a bit distant since my nanny died and ya know with all the dead people in my life and the pregnancy, I would have thought this should have been expected, ok maybe not the dead people thing because he didn’t know about that but the pregnancy and dead nan should have been enough for him. 

I had been out all day shopping for baby stuff and my back and feet were killing me. This bump was bloody huge I thought I was going to have a giant of a baby or twins, my god it was tiring walking round all day.

I approached the book shop and noticed it was closed early which was unusual as Pete never closed the book shop early, all the lights upstairs were off so I assumed he had gone out. It wasn’t mega early, like half an hour but still he was always in work until the last minute so it was a bit odd. 

I went upstairs into the flat and put my things down and I heard kissing noises coming from the bedroom. Now you know what kissing noises sound like, that lip to lip sound as you go in, so I tip-toed to the bedroom without making a sound and to my horror there was Pete lying on our bed smooching some other woman. 

I stood for a minute and froze as if everything around me stood still, like in extreme slow motion. Was I seeing this right? I couldn’t fucking believe it but before I could scream he saw me and jumped off of her.

“Oh my god Robyn this isn’t what it looks like?” he said panicked.

Oh really motherfucker? “Then tell me what the fuck this is?” I demanded seething through my teeth.

“Uhhh, well, uhhh, she…. She is just a friend” he lied to me.

“Try and lie quicker ass hole and you….” I pointed to her my face red with anger “Get the fuck out before I rip your fucking face off.”

She could see I was about to explode, all the anger was written all over my face and yet somehow I was staying composed. She picked up her shit and ran out of the door and now it was just him and me alone. I didn’t know what to say, I was emotional, angry, hurt, annoyed and upset. I was pregnant with this guy’s baby and he decided to do this to me?

“Tell me why!” I demanded trying to hold back the tears.

“I don’t know, I felt lonely and she showed me some attention, you haven’t been giving that to me, you have been distant and I needed something” he tried to blame me.

Typical fucking guy, they cheat on you and then state it’s your fault because you weren’t ‘loving’ enough. Even if I wasn’t being loving the way he expected that wasn’t an excuse to go fucking cheating on me was it! I mean what a total fucking idiot but being pregnant and scared of being alone what did I do? 

Like an idiot myself I forgave the dickhead and stuck with him and I wished I hadn’t because once the trust had gone you were never able to really get it back. As months went on he repeatedly hurt me to the point where I was so low I found it hard to pick myself back up again. 

When I finally went into labour, thirty two hours later I had a beautiful baby boy and it hit me, there he was, my son, my baby this monster would come for, Jay was there hovering by my bed as usual and I had never felt so scared.

“You can do it Robyn” he told me so full of confidence in me.

Pete and I had this beautiful baby boy which we named Jack and I tried to focus my attention on him. I had lost my parents in a car accident about a month before Jack was born and I had no brothers or sisters so without him I felt completely alone and like I had no place else to go. 

It was like he had caught me in this web which was full of lies and deceit but no matter how hard I fought there was no way out and I was trapped. I had tried to go off the ghosts’ radar for little Jack’s sake as I didn’t want him getting caught up in all of that but it wasn’t so easy. Jack was born with the same gift. 

At first I thought it was just baby stuff you know like when you catch a baby randomly smiling at nothing, just air, but as he grew older he would have conversations in his room when he was the only one in there. Now I knew from that moment he had my gift because I used to do the same thing. I did finally find the strength to leave Pete when Jack was four years old. I couldn’t go on anymore with the heartache. 

He had cheated on me more times than I care to remember and then always tried to make out it was my fault, he had broken my heart over and over and enough was enough. At that point in my life I felt free, I felt stronger than I had felt in a very long time.

I got a little cottage in the country and worked in a care home where I could take Jack and put him in the nursery nearby when I was on shift. 

Life seemed like it was going perfect right? Well not for long, you see now they weren’t just coming for me, they had started coming for Jack too and all those words from that dead psychic were going around in my mind.

One night on a late shift I was helping down in the morgue underneath the care home. Yes I know, mega creepy, but it was there for when the elderly died and they were waiting to be collected by their loved ones and let’s face it, no-one likes the smell of a dead body and sometimes we had these dead people for weeks whilst we awaited funeral organising or family collection and sadly some of them had no family to speak of so they would remain there until we or someone arranged a burial for them. 

I was walking down the corridor; it was a little cramped down there, broken beds on the sides and broken equipment against the wall all the way down to the exit. Mess! As I was leaving I heard a child crying. It sounded like Jack so being a mother I went towards the crying sounds, but with caution.

“JACK!” I shouted out but my voice just echoed.

The sounds become louder as I approached the end of the corridor where dead people were lying on ice-cold slabs waiting to be put in the fridge, they were covered with plastic sheets to stop the smell leaking out and to try and compose their dignity, but as I got there the sounds stopped.

I felt the temperature drop to ice-cold and I could see the air come out of my mouth. I knew one was there with me somewhere but it could have been one of the dead bodies in that room. 

I tried not to freak out but my heart was thumping so hard I swear heavens could hear it. Then one of Jack’s toy balls rolled from behind a curtain and hit my foot. I thought Jack was behind the curtain so I walked over to it and moved it quickly, to my horror there he was sitting in a high chair. My head spun
‘who the fuck would put a high-chair down there?'
 I didn’t know but as I went to grab him I was hit and thrown across the room away from him.

“He’s mine….” This dark monstrous voice spoke.

“GET OFF HIM” I screamed as I got back up and ran towards him.