Dead Girl Walking Read online

  Dead Girl Walking

  Sharon Sant

  Dead Girl Walking © Sharon Sant 2015

  All rights reserved

  All characters and events featured in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are entirely fictitious and any resemblance to any person, organisation, place or thing, living or dead, or event or place, is purely coincidental and completely unintentional.

  No part of this e-book may be reproduced in any form other than that in which it was purchased and without the written permission of the author.

  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  www.sharonsant.com

  Table of Contents

  Prologue: The First Kill

  One: A day at a time

  Two: Dante, like the painter

  Three: A house full of ghosts

  Four: The Spark

  Five: Fresh Blood

  Six: Cold Comfort

  Seven: Coping Mechanisms

  Eight: Purpose

  Nine: Action

  Ten: The Path

  Eleven: The Huntress

  Twelve: Chasing Ghosts

  Thirteen: Cat and Mouse

  Fourteen: Hunting the Hunter

  Fifteen: Destinies

  Sixteen: Repercussions

  About the Author

  Prologue: The First Kill

  He watches her from the shadows at the corner of the street. The late heat of the sun blackens them, the contrast between dark and shade sharper. She steps from the salon where she works, hitches her handbag over a shoulder and breaks into a run. Her long, lean legs are graceful in the simplicity of their task, her shoulders tanned, a little red where she’s missed with the sun block, but the blush of sunburn making her even more beautiful. Her dark hair is pinned loosely but she lets it out as she goes, sends it cascading down her back.

  He bites his lip. If she continues to run until she is out of sight, he will have to risk drawing attention to himself by running too, or he will have to let her go. She has already sent out her siren call, and he cannot help but follow it.

  Breaking cover he strides out into the blazing sun of a freakishly hot October evening, squinting as his eyes adjust from dark to light.

  And then, offering him a gift, she stops dead in the street. He pulls back, out of sight, pretends to search in his wallet as he keeps one careful eye on her. Pulling a pink phone from her bag, she dials. A few words he can’t make out, a breathy giggle, and she ends the call. He can tell by the coquettish way she drops the phone back into her bag and the slow smile that spreads across her face that it’s the boy she’s planning to meet. Tossing her hair back, she resumes her journey at a normal walking pace now.

  He follows, careful not to get too close but careful not to lose her. She stops at the entrance to a tree lined pathway and peers into the green murk of the low hanging tunnel of foliage. The leaves are all colours, some turning yellow to gold, many still green with the lingering summer. Flanking the path, hidden from sight by the overgrown, wrapper-infested trees and shrubs, there is a rambling industrial estate and waste ground littered with the carcasses of dumped furniture and split rubbish bags. It is a well-known local shortcut across town, often avoided late at night when it becomes a haven for drug users and prostitutes. But it is bright, warm daylight now, with the smell of barbeque smoke on the air.

  She glances around. She doesn’t see him but he knows she wants him to follow. She turns down the path and is quickly swallowed by the gloom. He turns down the path too.

  He knows he has done a bad thing. Even as the breath leaves her body there is a flicker of conscience and there is panic; he wants to undo it, but there is no bringing her back from the place he has sent her to. The grungy echoes of cars on the road and the distant chime of an ice-cream van, the tinny squeals of children at play in far-off gardens return to his consciousness to remind him that society lies just yards away.

  He has done a bad, bad thing and he cannot undo it. His frantic stare turns into a scowl even as this last thought drifts from his head. It’s her fault. He saw her, with that boy. She was dirty, and now the world is cleaner. He is a slave, just like every other man in the world. He wants what she has, he needs what she has, but he hates that he does. He was doing what needed to be done.

  Getting to his feet, he stares down at her. With her eyes closed and perfectly still, she looks like a doll. In the cool gloom of the thick trees the grubby marks on her pastel pink dress and his handprints around her neck are barely there at all. She could be asleep. He lifts his hands to look at them, and then rubs them over his trousers, as if to somehow rub away the guilt. And the filth and the stink… yes, they have to go too. Her filth has to be cleansed from him. From his pocket he pulls a tiny bottle and pours some of the astringent liquid over his hands, frantically kneading it into every pore, every crevice, over and over again. Must be clean, must be clean…

  There’s so much rubbish around that hiding the body is easy. Besides, in his line of work he doesn’t want the body too well hidden. He needs it to be found, to start the flurry of activity that will surround the discovery, the excitement and vigour that will grip his department. He will have information and women will think him important, worth talking to; might even turn to him for protection. They will want to be near him when they leave the office for their cars at the end of the working day. He will be their knight in shining armour.

  Satisfied with his clean-up operation he emerges onto the road again. That’s when he sees the girl with the long hair, orange and gold in the light of the setting sun. Instantly, she catches his attention. Not so much because of what she is doing, but because of what she is not doing. She’s dressed head to toe in black; thick tights and Doc Marten boots despite the heat. Her head is down, hurrying along – he can see she wants to be invisible, just like he does right now. He feels he knows her from somewhere but can’t quite place it. Curiosity burns, the itch to follow her takes him.

  He turns on his heel, starts to walk in her footsteps. But she is moving fast and his hunger has been sated for now. Halting and staring after her, he memorises every last detail so that he will recognise her again.

  She can wait.

  For now, at least.

  One: A day at a time

  They’re always screaming, but some days they scream louder than others. Some days I can shut out the sound. Others, simply breathing feels like an act of betrayal. How do I convey emotions as vague and intangible as this to the woman sitting in front of me? What words exist that could make her understand my nightmare? Even if I could open out my mind like the pages of a book for her to read, with no experience to match mine – an experience that no other human being has had – would she comprehend what she found there?

  ‘Cassie?’

  I shake my head to clear it. My fingers ache from digging them into the chair.

  ‘Cassie?’ she repeats.

  I refocus and think about what the counsellor has just asked me. What do I think made me come back? She’s not asking me out of professional need; it’s not a question that will help her make a diagnosis or form a treatment plan. She’s just itching with curiosity about the freak, same as everyone else. She could never understand, no matter how long I sit here explaining it to her.

  ‘How should I know why I came back? I never asked to.’

  ‘Do you wish you had died?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you? My entire family were wiped out and I wake up in a mortuary when I should have been dead too.’

  ‘But you were dead. Clinically. For at least eight hours, according to the report I have here.’

  I raise my arms in a sweeping gesture down my body. ‘And yet, here I sit.’

  She stares at me. I do
n’t like it; it feels like an x-ray of my soul. ‘Your family were in the same mortuary?’ She knows they were, she has the report right there.

  ‘Yes. My sister, Tish, was next to me. She was the one I first touched.’

  ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘I felt her death.’

  She frowns.

  ‘I don’t mean just felt it…’ God knows why I need to explain myself. And it wouldn’t be the first time – not to this woman, of course, but to doctors, relatives, anyone who would listen in the beginning. I’m like a DVD played over and over. Nobody understood it back then, and nobody understands it now. Nobody ever will. But I tell her again now, simply because she’s asking. ‘I lived it through her eyes. Every emotion, every sight, every sound – her perception of the world, not mine.’

  ‘But you were in the same car. It could have been your own near-death experience you were seeing?’

  ‘It was hers. And I didn’t nearly die, I died. As you just told me.’ I tear a sharp edge from my fingernail.

  She nods and closes the file. ‘How did that make you feel?’

  ‘Like someone had ripped out my heart.’ I can tell what she’s thinking and her next sentence confirms it.

  ‘You were a promising literature student. Heading for a first, I believe.’

  ‘Yeah, so you’re thinking literature student equals melodramatic, artistic temperament, blah, blah. What she’s saying can’t be quite true. She’s gone loopy.’

  ‘Actually, what I was going to say is that you’ve dropped out and it seems a shame.’

  ‘Of course I have. What else was I going to do?’

  ‘Perhaps… and you don’t have to answer this to me or yourself straight away, but perhaps going back to university might help you regain some sort of normality? Impose a routine, mix with people, immerse yourself in study – it could be what you need to help get over the accident.’

  ‘You’re serious? You think a little socialising will sort me out? I haven’t just had the January blues or something.’

  ‘No,’ she says in an irritatingly measured tone. ‘Nobody says it is going to be easy and it will take a long time, but you do need to start on some sort of path to recovery. Your accident was traumatic but you survived.’

  ‘It’s not the accident that’s the biggie here. Although I fail to see how many more levels of bad that could have been. It’s the aftermath that’s the problem. How do I live with myself now?’

  She pauses, staring out of the window while she composes a response. There’s a heavy grey sky outside, the kind that feels like it’s pressing you into the earth. I watch the counsellor – Helen, I think she said her name was, though I wasn’t all that bothered when she was telling me. Her pale face is taut, the crow’s feet around her eyes showing unkindly in the stark daylight from the window. Inwardly I smile, even though it’s bitchy. I’m betting underneath her calm, professional exterior there’s a tempest of doubt. I’m betting she’s never had to deal with someone like me before and it’s freaking her right out. Because I died. Not nearly died, not for a few seconds died – tunnels of light and floating above your body crap – but actually, clinically died. Then I woke up surrounded by drawers of corpses, some of them my family.

  ‘You must have made some sort of decision, however subconsciously, that you’re ready to tackle this. After all, you contacted us, not the other way around.’

  I think about what she’s said. She’s right, I woke one morning and the idea was there, as if someone had planted it during the night. Next thing I know I’m rooting through drawers for the card I was given just after the accident. What made me do that?

  ‘Christmas was hardest,’ I say. ‘I hardly cried through the whole summer after it happened. There’s this bit of me…’ I swallow hard, almost ashamed to admit it, ‘I cried at first, of course. But then it was like I had to hide my pain, like I couldn’t let anyone see. It felt like something I had no right to share because I survived and they didn’t.’

  ‘You thought you didn’t deserve sympathy?’

  ‘Something like that,’ I half-smile. ‘But Christmas… that was tough. I thought I was getting used to it, able to cope alone. Nobody wanted me and I didn’t want anyone and I was just fine that way. I went out when I needed to, did what I needed to and the rest of the time I stayed out of people’s way. But then Christmas came and everywhere was lights and Santa and families rushing to be with each other and I had nobody.’

  ‘It’s only natural that a time like that would hit you hard, especially your first.’

  I nod slowly, fighting the lump in my throat. ‘I stared at the walls on Christmas day and I didn’t do a thing – didn’t watch telly or eat dinner. You know… you can hear the church bells of St Joseph’s from our house when it’s really quiet. I could hear them that day, loud and clear, calling all the families to the Christmas Day service. My mum, she wasn’t religious really, but she loved the Christmas Day thing at church. When I was little she’d take me. When I got older she tried to persuade me but I spouted a load of atheist crap at her and refused. I think it made her sad but she never said; she just took Tish instead. Tish was always happy to go, no matter how old she was.

  So when I heard the bells that day, as loud as if they were in my living room in our silent house, that’s when I realised how utterly alone I was. And how alone I will always be unless I can turn things around. It’s hard to admit that I want to, but it must be true. Like you just said, why would I come here if I didn’t?’ I rub a hand over my eyes and sniff hard. I’m supposed to be able to cry here, right? If there is a good place to cry, it’s in the office of the woman who is trained to fix me but even now I beat myself up for the weakness.

  For a while she doesn’t speak, she looks down at her notepad and scribbles. ‘I think we have a lot of work to do,’ she says finally.

  ‘I’m not even sure where to start.’

  ‘The first hurdle we have to cross is your guilt. It seems to me you’re holding tight to it right now.’

  ‘What else can I do? What’s so special about me that I was chosen over them?’

  ‘Despite what you may feel, there is no choice, it was luck – something to do with what side of the car you sat in, the road conditions, where the other car hit you – all of those things and more, probably. But it’s only natural you should feel guilt that you survived when your family didn’t.’

  ‘I didn’t survive. I came back to life.’

  ‘Whatever the reason,’ she says slowly, ‘the issue is that you are here while your family are not.’ She can’t quite look me in the eye when she says this, like it hurts. It’s the same look I get from everyone. I’ve had eight months to recognise it now.

  I check my watch. Mum bought it for me when I left school. It’s a chunky thing, big leather strap – a man’s watch, really. Mum said she would rather have seen me in something daintier when I showed it to her in the shop, but she bought it for me anyway. The face is still cracked where it hit the window of the car but it works so I wear it. I’m suddenly very tired and I want to be alone. I’m relieved to see that we’re near the end of the session. ‘We’re done here for today?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says getting up from the let’s get all your feelings out in this nice flowery place armchair and crossing to her desk. She pulls a leather-bound diary from the drawer. ‘If you feel you’ve had enough. Shall I book you for the same time next week?’

  ‘For what good it will do,’ I reply, shrugging on my coat.

  She looks as though she wants to say something for a moment but then her mouth clamps shut again. She doesn’t like me, I can tell. I don’t blame her. I don’t like me right now. I should be dead but I’m not and I’m glad and I can’t deal with the guilt that brings. But I suppose she gets paid to sort out my angst.

  ‘The receptionist will book the appointment for you if you give her this,’ she says filling in a small white card with the date and time, which she then hands to me. She smiles but it doesn
’t reach her eyes.

  I take the card. Maybe I’ll come back next week, maybe I won’t. Maybe Death will realise his mistake before then and come to claim me.

  The reception is dry and hot and my coat is heavy. I know my cheeks are burning as I wait for the woman at the desk to finish her phone call. People are watching me; I feel their eyes bore into me. They know about me. The walls close in, sweat runs down my back, my breath is sharp in my throat. I need to get out. The receptionist glances up at me and then turns her attention back to the phone call. It’s a colleague on the other end, I think, there’s a respectful familiarity in her tone. The floor is sloping, the room spinning, tipping me off balance. I should have known better than to come here like this, I should have known I’d have one of my attacks. I gulp in air. I can’t have this, not now, not here while people are watching me… Get off the phone; I’m not going to make it…

  She drops the receiver back into the cradle and I almost throw the card at her in my desperation to get out. She looks at it and then taps at her keyboard.

  ‘Next Wednesday?’

  I nod.

  ‘Two fifteen?’

  Again. Just give me the card and let me get out.

  ‘There you go, Miss Brown.’

  I grab the appointment slip from her and almost run to the door.

  Outside, I lean against the cold brick of the wall and suck in huge breaths. I turn my face to the sky and close my eyes, letting the sting of freezing rain chill my face. I can almost hear the hiss as it evaporates on my hot skin.

  ‘Are you alright, love?’

  My eyes open to find an old woman regarding me with concern and some curiosity. My mouth is dry and feels glued shut.

  ‘Fine,’ I manage to croak.

  She looks like she might say something else. Then she gives me an absent smile before shuffling off on her way.

  I take in my surroundings. The street is held in the lull before rush hour. I have to move now; I have to get home before it starts, before the streets pulse with commuters and noise, before darkness brings the piercing white beams of headlights that hurt my eyes. But it’s a long walk back to the house and I’ll never make it in time and the thought of it now makes my legs go weak. I can’t stay here and I can’t go home and I feel the panic start to swell in my chest, filling me up, displacing everything else. Breathe, Cassie, breathe.