The Alleyway

John sat down at the edge of the lawn. The grass was wet, but he didn’t feel it. He was getting used to not feeling things now. He’d been in the garden for two weeks, but it felt like a lifetime. Every day he waited and hoped that Katherine would come out and see him, but most days nothing happened. Once, she had come outside and hung the washing up on the line. He stood close to her and shouted, but of course she didn’t react. She looked like she didn’t want to spend any time in the garden. He was surprised, in a way, that she was still there at all, that she was still washing her clothes. But he supposed that life went on. Just not his life.

              When he’d first opened his eyes and found himself at the end of the garden, he’d been confused. The last thing he remembered was opening the gate to confront the boys in the alley. Every night they’d been congregating to drink and smoke, usually in the straight part of the alleyway which was just beneath John and Katherine’s bedroom window. He didn’t mind so much, as he tended to fall asleep straight away, but Katherine had spent more than one sleepless night because of their antics.

              ‘You should call the police,’ she’d said that evening. He wasn’t sure why it was him who had to call the police, when it was her who was disturbed.

              ‘Don’t be silly,’ he said, ‘they’re just kids. Having a drink, having a laugh. They’ve probably got nowhere else to go. Don’t you remember what it was like when you were that age?’

              ‘Yes, I do. I never hanged around alleyways getting drunk all night.’ John sighed. He wasn’t sure when Katherine had turned into such an old woman. He supposed they were both middle-aged now, but she never used to be this miserable. They used to go out every weekend, have a good time. But these days she preferred to stay at home, perhaps even go to bed early… but not with him. She worked hard all week, and said she was too tired to go out at the weekend now, but it never used to stop her.

Now, in the garden, he remembered how annoyed he’d felt with her, with her insistence that he do something about the boys in the alley, and with her general negative attitude to everything. He’d felt a real distance had grown up between them. It seemed so petty now. He’d give anything to be able to talk to her again, to see her smile. Or even just to hear her complain to him.

‘I’m not going to call the police,’ he’d said. ‘I don’t want to be one of those people who calls the police on their neighbours.’

‘But they’re not our neighbours, they’re some stupid kids. They could be from anywhere.’

‘Well, still, I’m not calling the police,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll go out and talk to them myself.’ What an idiot he’d been! There he was, thinking he could talk to a bunch of yobbos just because he’d been young once. A bunch of yobbos… that was the kind of thing his dad would say. When you’re middle-aged, you seesaw between trying to be down with the kids, and sounding like your own dad.

Maybe things would have been different between him and Katherine if they’d had kids of their own, but it never happened. Katherine was 40 now, young enough to still have a baby, he supposed, if she found someone new to have one with. He was a little older than her, but not anymore. It seemed like he would be stuck forever at 45.

He’d got up, put his clothes on and gone out into the garden. He supposed that, perhaps, if he’d gone out of the front door and down the alley from the front, things might have been different. But probably not. He’d opened the gate and shouted quite quickly ‘Hey lads, do you mind keeping it down a bit, my wife’s trying to sleep.’ That was the last thing he remembered. One of the lads had stabbed him in the chest, he’d fallen down on the grass and bled to death.

Being a ghost was no fun when you were trapped in the same place all the time and unable to do anything. He could walk out into the alleyway and down it a little before an invisible forcefield stopped him from going any further. He could walk up the garden towards the house, but couldn’t enter it.

During the past two weeks, he’d seen a few people walking down the alley. One or two had stopped to put a bouquet of flowers next to the gate. There were quite a few flowers mouldering away there now. He thought it odd that the people who’d left the flowers were no one he recognised. What had happened to his friends and family? Had any of them been to pay their respects? If so, he hadn’t seen them.

One young guy was quite distressed as he put down his bouquet. He was crying. John wondered if he was one of the yobbos who’d been there when he was stabbed – maybe he was the stabber himself. He looked him closely in his leaky eyes, but there was no way of telling. It did seem a bit of an overreaction, though, for a stranger. John was pretty sure that he’d never seen him before in his life.

As he stood there in the alleyway, he suddenly saw something in his peripheral vision. He turned. There was a young woman walking towards him.

‘Are you all set?’ she said. He took a step back, shocked.

‘You can see me?’ he asked. She looked pretty ordinary. Probably in her mid-twenties, with long, mousy brown hair. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. It didn’t seem like enough for the cold, autumnal day. The mini-heatwave of early October was very much over now, and a cold wind was blowing down the alley. John could feel the wind, but not the cold.

‘Oh!’ she said. She stopped and smiled, ‘You’re a newbie. You’re in for a treat, you must be bored out of your brain. Not that you have a brain anymore, of course!’ She gave a short, cackly laugh.

‘Are you… Who are you?’

‘My name’s Kim. I’ve been haunting round here for about ten years.’ She paused and looked down at the bouquets. ‘What happened to you?’

‘I… some yobbos stabbed me. I’ve been here for two weeks, but I haven’t seen anyone else. It’s so good to be able to talk to someone.’

‘Well, yeah. We’ve all been busy. Gonna be a big one tonight!’ She smiled again, and her face lit up.

‘What’s happening tonight?’

‘It’s Halloween, int it?’ she said. ‘Biggest night of the year for us spooks.’ He sighed. He’d always hated Halloween. When he was a kid, it was nothing. No one ever trick or treated or got dressed up, no one had parties. Everyone was just waiting for Bonfire Night, that was the real celebration of the autumn. Then, some time in the past ten years or so, Halloween had come out of nowhere and taken over. True, he supposed if he was still a kid he’d like to get dressed up and get sweets from strangers… but he was an adult now and he still preferred Bonfire Night.

‘Not much I can do, really,’ he said. ‘I’m stuck in the garden, and the alleyway.’

Kim laughed again.‘ Yeah, but it’s Halloween. Things are different today.’ She turned and walked back down the alley. ‘Are you coming?’

Katherine looked out of the window for the last time. She’d packed her bags and was moving out. There was no way she could go out into the garden again, not with what had happened out there. She sighed and suppressed a sob. She’d been a nervous wreck these past few weeks, and who could blame her? What on earth possessed her to ask John to do something about the boys in the alley that night? Why didn’t she call the police herself, rather than let him go out and confront them? It had taken her some time to arrange to move out of the house, but she’d finally arranged to stay at her sister’s place. Anywhere was better than here.

              As she walked out of the front door, she felt the wind bite at her through her coat. She was alarmed when she saw a group of four young men walking down the street, one covered in blood. Was this some kind of sick joke? Then she remembered. It was Halloween. All the same, it seemed a bit callous that they were walking down this street – didn’t they know what had happened? She pulled her car keys out of her pocket and was about to open the car door when a young woman approached her.

              ‘Katherine!’ she said. Katherine turned and looked. The woman was young, with long brown hair. She was wearing just jeans and a T-shirt. Wasn’t she cold? Kids these days – they made it a fashion choice to never wear coats. Well, it was their own fault if they got hypothermia.

              ‘Hello?’ she said. She’d never seen the girl before, and wondered how she knew her name.

              ‘I just wanted to say. John… he says he’s sorry. For going out that night, and not calling the police.’

              ‘What are you talking about? Who are you?’

              ‘He… well you can’t see him yet, but one day you might. Maybe next Halloween, if you come back here.’

              ‘What are you? Some kind of fake medium? Do you look online for deaths and then come and harangue the bereaved? Could you please fuck off and leave me alone?’ Katherine was shaking with fury as she got into the driving seat. She put the key in the ignition and drove away. The girl seemed to have disappeared. Katherine sighed. She hated conflict. She’d never talked to anyone that way before. But what was the girl thinking?

              At the estate agent’s she sipped the foul cup of tea Mr ‘Call me Bill’ Thompson had given her. ‘So what do you think?’ she asked him.

              ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s a great property, but you unfortunately its history will probably pull the price down a bit. To be honest, I’m surprised you paid so much for it when you bought it five years ago.’

              ‘I don’t believe this,’ she said. ‘Not only do I lose my husband, but the value of my house goes down because I lost my husband.’

              Bill drummed his fingers on the table, ‘I’m truly sorry for you loss. It’s not a great time, is it? Have they found the boys who did it?’

              ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t expect they will. Kids in gangs, they never talk to the police.’ She could feel herself starting to cry, and she hated herself for it. The waves of emotion would not go away. ‘But there was nothing wrong with it when we bought it five years ago. It’s just in the past few years that we’ve had problems.’

              ‘Well,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing wrong with your property per se, but the general area… it’s never been great. There was that business with Rileys back in the day, these things do have an effect, you know.’

              Katherine nodded, put her tea cup down and left. She remembered now. When they bought the house, the estate agent had said that it still fetched a big price, despite the ‘business with the Rileys’. She’d thought nothing of it at the time. They should have got it cheaper than they did.

              Back at her sister’s, she pulled out her phone and googled the Rileys. It was such a sad thing, made even sadder to Katherine now because it was tinged with her own experiences. It was about five years before they’d moved in. A couple round the back of their house, who lived in the next street along, called Tim and Kim Riley. As she reminded herself of the details, Katherine started to cry. She’d been so lucky, so lucky to have John. Someone who cared about her. Not like Tim Riley, who was one of those controlling partners you hear about. Wouldn’t let Kim do anything on her own, was always threatening her. The police had been called out many a time to the house, but they never did anything. Her body was found in the alleyway, next to the bins. At first, Tim had claimed that someone else had murdered her, local yobbos perhaps, but no one believed him. Thankfully, he was convicted of murder and sent to prison.

              Katherine scrolled through the images, until one jumped out at her. It was a picture of Kim Riley, in a T-shirt and jeans, smiling at the camera, her long brown hair framing her face.

John leaned against a yew tree and watched the festivities. There were a lot of them in graveyard, laughing and joking and generally behaving as if they were drunk. An old man was dancing by himself in from foot to foot. There was a group of children holding hands in a ring and running round and round in a dizzy breeze. They were all dead, he supposed, they were all ghosts like him. He wished he could drink and celebrate, but of course that was impossible.

              ‘Hey!’ said Kim, sidling up to him, ‘How are you enjoying your first Halloween?’

              ‘Well, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It’s good to be out of the garden and the alleyway, but… Did she really tell you to fuck off? She never tells anyone to fuck off.’

              ‘Honest to God,’ said Kim ‘I can’t say I blame her. Why should she believe in ghosts? I never did, tell I became one.’

              ‘Don’t you miss it?’ he asked. ‘Life? Reality?’

              She frowned. ‘Not really. Maybe some of it. But a lot of it was shit.’ She smiled. ‘And being a ghost can be fun, you know. It’s not all doom and gloom.’

              John stepped forward, steeling himself to join in the ghostly fun. Maybe he would get used to it. But he still preferred Bonfire Night.