The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women (Mammoth Books)

up. About to cross the room, she saw something glinting on the floor, and bent down to find two gold links, snapped from a chain.

Holding them, looking at the miniscule circles lying in the palm of her hand, she had an image of Rachel’s necklace, broken as it was brutally yanked from her neck, and shivered as she touched the skin across her own collar-bone. Then, closing her hand on the tiny bits of gold, she went through to the main room, where she stopped just short of colliding with Rachel.

She only just managed not to scream. Rachel had been in the flat the whole time. She must have been in the bathroom at first – she should have realized her friend wouldn’t have left that man here alone – but when she returned to the bedroom – had she seen them? Looked in, and seen Imogen standing with her trousers around her ankles? And said nothing? Was it a total shock, or something she had suggested or engineered, perhaps pursuing her own fantasy of a threesome—

If so, it clearly had not turned out as she’d dreamed. She had not interrupted them or tried to join in, and her continued silence now, and the expression on her face, frightened Imogen. She had never seen Rachel with such a terrible, staring face, and such a murderous look in her eye.

“Hey, Ray,” Imogen said softly, her heart in her throat. “We need to talk.”

Rachel’s fixed, hideous glare did not soften, and Imogen saw something that froze her heart. Yes, that was murder in her eyes. In one hand, half-hidden by her side, Rachel held the longest, sharpest knife from Imogen’s kitchen.

“Don’t.” The word jumped out, hot and urgent, forced through the lump of ice in Imogen’s chest, and then she ran for the safety of the bathroom. She slammed the door and locked it; then, leaning her head against the cool tiled wall, she began to cry.

But she soon regained control. She wouldn’t risk opening the door, but she spoke through it, yelling at Rachel that she was sorry, but that jerk wasn’t worth it, and couldn’t they please at least try to have a civilized conversation? Nothing at all in reply from Rachel, so Imogen took her time about having a shower. She knew her friend was no killer. Give her a few minutes to calm down, and then they’d talk.

When she came out of the bathroom, reeking of strawberry shower gel, the flat was empty. She knew it instantly, could tell from the atmosphere that she was alone, but went through the motions of searching, just in case. The long, sharp knife was back in the wooden block where it belonged. Rachel had gone without leaving a note.

She slept that night on the couch. It was not very comfortable, but she preferred a broken night of restless dozing to the company of the ghosts in her bed. When she woke at three, four, five and six, she phoned Rachel, and left humble, apologetic messages begging her to call back, regardless of the time.

At seven-thirty, as she dressed for work, Rachel’s phone was still switched off. At eight, she rang the landline number, and Andrew picked up.

“Andy, I need to talk to Rachel.”

There was a silence. “Imogen? I thought she was with you.”

She swallowed hard. “She left last night. It was after ten, after her usual train, but there’s a later one, isn’t there? She didn’t say, but I assumed she was going home.”

“What do you mean, she didn’t say?”

“She – she was upset when she left.”

“What was she upset about?”

Her eyes fell on the tiny gold links she’d brought through from the bathroom. “You know her gold necklace? From her nan? It broke.”

“She stormed out because she broke her necklace?”

“There was more to it than that, but it was my fault. I couldn’t get her to stay and talk about it.” Imogen touched one of the links with the tip of a finger, staring across the counter to the wooden knife-block on the far wall of the kitchen, all four black handles sticking out. “She was pretty mad – I was sure she’d go home, but maybe she has another friend she stays with sometimes.”

He didn’t reply.

“Look, if you see her . . . I mean, when she comes in, or calls, would you please ask her to call me?”

“I was going to say the same to you.”

She said a rather awkward goodbye, and then, as she broke the connection, felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck, and knew she was no longer alone.

There had been no sound, and the door had not opened, but even before she turned she knew who was there.

Rachel, looking just as she had the night before: same clothes, same ghastly expression, even the knife in her hand, although there had been no time for her to take it from the kitchen. She could only be a ghost.

Then the small, metallic click of a key in the lock, and the door opened. He came in and shut the door behind him, glaring, holding Rachel’s black-and-silver Nokia, which looked ridiculously tiny in his large hand.

“Why’d you keep calling?” he asked. “You think she’ll forgive you for what you did with me last night?”

She realized then that the murderous look in Rachel’s eyes, and the knife in her hand, had never been meant for her. She could only hope, as she sprinted for the kitchen, that her own attempt at self-defence would be more successful.

Freeze Out

Nancy Holder

Ghosts moved up and down the aisles of the funeral home chapel. Ghosts of grief, anger, despair.

The ghosts didn’t touch Cody.

What touched him was the cold smell of roses, icy and strangely fleshy. A spray of white roses lay like a sleeping ghost on his mother’s closed casket. Florists chilled their flowers so they wouldn’t rot as fast. It was minus seven degrees outside on the prairie of Minnesota. They should have kept the roses in the graveyard; their outer petals were beginning to brown.

Florists made funeral sprays out of the oldest flowers, the ones that were going to wilt the soonest. Those flowers didn’t have to endure until the last dance. The last dance was already over.

Cody sat with his father in the first pew of the funeral home’s non-confrontational, non-denominational chapel. The pew was cordoned off; there was a golden braided rope connected to a hook at either end, and in addition a rectangular ivory cardboard sign with ‘‘family’’ written in silver capital letters. The family was tiny, just three Magnusens – or there would be three, when Cody’s sister, Elle, got back from talking to the funeral director.

Cody sat beside his father, nervously watching him out of the corner of his eye. His father was very tall and thin, with taut, tanned skin – good Scandinavian genes – and rheumy blue eyes. Cody and Elle were afraid Kenneth Magnusen was going to make a scene. Kenneth had dementia; he wasn’t in his right mind. He did things now he would never have believed himself capable of. Sometimes he yelled. He lost control. But today there was no expression on their father’s face. No tears of grief. Or of anything else.

He was frozen.

Cody’s sister, Elle, had picked the funeral home because it was reasonably priced, there was no flashiness, and the director didn’t try to talk them into extras. “Mom wouldn’t have wanted frills,” Elle had said. Cody had said nothing, although he suspected that his mother would have wanted something more than the basics – a wooden coffin, a few flowers, a service. It was the way of their family not to argue or disagree.

Cody watched his father, and waited for Elle to come back from talking to the funeral director. He was aware of people trickling into the chapel. A quick glance told him it was some of the old ladies who had been his mother’s friends. He could hear their heavy footfalls as they heaved down the centre aisle. His mother had not seemed to know any thin old ladies.

He glanced over his shoulder at them. The organist of the Lutheran church headed the procession, followed by some of the members of the quilt ministry. There were three of them. His mother had stopped attending church three years before. None of the Magnusens knew why, and Cody and Elle hadn’t been going since their teens. It became an issue only when she died, and the siblings weren’t sure if they should ask Pastor Nylund if they could