The Hidey Hole

by David Price

part V

Recovery was quite swift, once I got out and about. It took a day or two, but getting home felt wonderful -- my own living room, the kitchen with a view of my tiny back garden. Then I sat in my own armchair, looked out at the world through my own living room windows, and tried not to get too emotional as Jo-Jo made a cup of tea.

I drank it quietly and nibbled at a custard cream as I watched the television. Jo-Jo didn’t try to make conversation, maybe sensing that I was still trying to take it all in. That night I got into my own bed (a wonderful feeling), but I didn’t make love to Jo-Jo. I needed time, and she gave me that.

Why not? We had all the time in the world.

For a whole week, getting back to full health was all important. I took long walks in the wood, occasionally went down the pub and drank either Coke or soda water, even took the odd little foray into the town centre. Life got back to normal. I couldn’t worry about any ghost, real or imagined.

But her presence was always there, if only in the periphery of my vision. She wasn’t about to let me forget her, that was for sure.

* * *

A few weeks later, I was visiting my local clinic, the first of many trips to give a blood sample. It was a wonderful October day, warm and sunny, a scattering of russet-coloured leaves on the ground — the kind of day where autumn was determinedly clinging on to summer.

I took a seat in the waiting room and picked up a newspaper, but I wasn’t kept waiting. In less than ten minutes I was walking out again. Call back tomorrow and pick up your book, Mr Oakleigh, then just follow the written instructions.

From that day on, it seemed, the pattern of my life was going to be dictated by the contents of a little yellow book.

I took a walk, feeling good.

It does feel good to get out in the sun again, doesn’t it Jason?

A child’s voice. I looked around, but there was no child within earshot. The voice was in my mind, surely?

I walked back to my car, trying to dismiss the whole thing. But the voice was crying out to me, and there was no way to silence it.

Or was there?

All I had to do was go back to the bridge.

* * *

For a while, bad dreams continued to trouble my sleep. The dreams always ended the same: back at the bridge.

I finally came to a decision after a visit to the cinema. There wasn’t much on, so we went to see a somewhat overrated horror film about a haunted house. When we came out, there was a torrential downpour, but at least I had parked near the entrance.

“Oh, wonderful,” Jo-Jo moaned.

We hung around the foyer for a few minutes, then made a dash for the car when it eased up.

For a while I sat behind the wheel, waiting for the rain to ease off and turning the whole thing over in my mind. This was something I had to do, and I couldn’t put it off any longer.

I turned to Jo-Jo.

“There is something that has been on my mind,” I told her.

“Like I didn’t know? I’m a woman, Jace. I sense these things. I’ve just been waiting for you to come out with it.”

I nodded, looked ahead through the windscreen.

“The old railway bridge. There was something I never told you. You remember when it collapsed?”

“Of course I do.”

“There was... something... behind those bricks.”

I told her about the skeleton.

But not the other part, the part about the ghost. I had never mentioned it, and was still afraid of putting it into words. That would make it real.

“Maybe someone else found her,” I said. “I just need to go and take a look.”

She chewed on her bottom lip for a moment, as though unsure. Then she just nodded.

“Alright, but that place made my skin crawl. Maybe I sensed something. Are you sure about what you saw? We were very young.”

“I know. But it was there. And I just left her.”

I looked at her, thought a moment.

“You don’t have to come,” I told her.

“Yes I do.”

“In all things together, hey?”

“Something like that.”

I squeezed her leg affectionately, and then drove off. I wanted her to come, and I think she sensed that.

After all, the bridge was our secret; it was only right that we should do this together.

“I’ve still got the torch,” I said. “We just need to buy some batteries.”

* * *

So we made the first of two visits to the bridge. I thought it would resolve things; as if life could ever be that simple.

Of course, it was still there. Why couldn’t they just demolish the damned thing?

It certainly brought back memories. I took the torch out of my pocket. The plastic casing had cracked after all this time, but it was still fit for purpose. I approached the archway, shone the light inside the tunnel... and there was the pile of bricks, just as we had left them.

We stepped inside. When I turned the light into the niche, my throat was dry.

“Ooh,” Jo-Jo said, as if to say So you really did see something.

There was the skeleton, just as we had left it. No one had passed this way in a long, long time. I glanced up.

And remembered the last thing I had ever seen in here.

* * *

Entering the cave just after the collapse, I just stood there and stared, my skin crawling. No way, I thought, but that skull just kept on grinning, mocking me.

Something touched me, a hand pressing down on my back, just between the shoulder blades.

“There’s nothing here,” I said aloud, and said it again just to convince myself.

Then something — a sixth sense, I suppose — made me look up.

Straight into the eyes of a young girl!

Just staring down at me, as though there was a window in the wall.

But there wasn’t. She was leaning through the wall, about two feet above the point of collapse. She was only there for a few seconds; then she just faded away and vanished.

That brief glimpse into the ‘other world’ would haunt my dreams for many years to come.

It would be another twelve years before we went there again.

* * *

I just stood there, half expecting that ghost to pop her head out from the brickwork.

I needn’t have worried; this time, she was a no show.

I felt breathless; then I had a dizzy spell and almost collapsed. I staggered back and had to hold onto the wall for support.

“Jace!”

Jo-Jo reached under my shirt and put her hand on my chest.

“I’m alright.”

“Your heart’s hammering; this can wait.”

“It’s waited long enough.”

“Then take a minute.”

So I rested. Jo-Jo took the torch and shone it into the niche. After a second she stepped inside and picked something up.

For a moment she held it in her hands, turning it over and over. Then she stepped out of the tunnel and into the light. We could then see that it was an old school satchel, green with mould and swollen with age; it certainly didn’t date back to Victorian times.

I took the torch and shone a light back into the tunnel — and then I finally noticed what I never had before: the section of bricks didn’t match the rest of the walls. It seemed that someone else had been aware of my little hidey hole.

Jo-Jo started to undo the straps, but the whole thing just came apart at the seams.

“So much for finesse,” she said, and ripped it in two.

A couple of things fell out: an ‘Oxford’ pencil tin and an old exercise book, which the rotting leather had only just managed to preserve.

“What do you think we’re going to find in this book?” Jo-Jo asked.

“Nothing pleasant,” I answered, but we both knew that we’d have to look. Whoever’s skin had been wrapped around those bones had called out to us. It was inevitable that we’d learn her story.

And so we made our way back to the car; it was time to put a name to my nightmare.

* * *

But it was something I would quite happily have left alone. Unpleasant things are very easy to turn a blind eye to.

I remembered the first time I had been transferred to another ward.

A male nurse had helped me into a chair, and then wheeled me down those long and winding corridors.

I knew then how it felt to be invisible.

People looked straight over my head, as if I wasn’t even there. I had an oxygen mask over my face, and I was holding the bottle in my lap. Yes, it made them uncomfortable to look, but I couldn’t resent it. I’d have looked away too (and, if truth be told, I really hated being seen like that).

In the same way, I did not want to look through the pages of that book. This story could only end badly, and I was uncomfortable prying into it.

But that book was crying out to be read. I owed that to the victim, at least.

* * *

Back in our flat, Jo-Jo placed the book on the table. Then, taking hold of a top corner, she peeled the cover back. The writing on those stiff and bloated pages was just legible.

“Let’s copy this,” she said.

It made sense. We both had laptops, but had kept hold of the old Packard Bell as a standby. It was painfully slow these days, but the scanner still worked.

The book had come apart by the time Jo-Jo had scanned all the pages, but at least we now had a record.

I delicately put the pages of the exercise book into a plastic bag.

“Alright,” I said, “let’s see what she had to say for herself.”

Proceed to part VI...