‘It was our great pleasure,’ Bob said.
‘Anyway, this was the night before my sister … the night before Holly died. Me and the girls were drinking cider with some boys in the park, but I was freezing and wanted my bigger jacket. I didn’t want to go home by myself but the boys wouldn’t come with me. They were scared.’
‘Of your house?’ he asked.
‘Yeah … my house was kind of a thing in the local paper by then and it turns out people think poltergeists are contagious. Like a ghost’s going to jump from you onto them.’ She looked at her palm. Traced a line in it. ‘Kassy was having too much fun getting the boys worked up, so she stayed with them. But Steph and Jo came with me, even though they were scared.’ Rachel looked over at Jo and smiled at her. ‘We were walking up my path and I think it was you who saw it first.’
Jo nodded.
‘You sort of yelped and said, “what the hell is that?” And me and Steph looked up and we all saw this …’ Rachel laughed nervously at the absurdity of it. ‘This shape up on the roof, over Holly’s room.’
‘Right over the top of it,’ Jo said. ‘Crouching, like it was trying to climb down and get in.’
‘It was dark, and hard to make out but … we could tell it was big. And it was really skinny. Then as soon as we saw it, it sort of turned its head.’
‘It was some sort of beast,’ Jo whispered.
A breeze rattled the skeleton tree. Everybody went silent for a moment to hear it.
‘Or perhaps it was a trick of the light?’ Matt said. ‘Or somebody up there? A prank?’
‘No, no. The shape was all wrong,’ Rachel said. ‘Its legs, were …’
‘They were like hind legs, and its head didn’t look right. It looked like …’ Jo stared toward Barley Street ‘like some sort of rabbit.’
‘Or a hare,’ Rachel whispered and immediately started scratching again. ‘I always think of it as a really, really tall hare. Standing up.’ She pulled her jacket across her, tight, then caught Matt’s eye. His crappy attempt at a poker face. ‘Look, I know it sounds insane but it really didn’t look like a man or an animal. It was more like … like both. And when it saw us it sort of swivelled its head and went to stand. Right up on its hind legs like a person would. And I swear it was as tall as you are … and that’s when we ran. We ran all the way back to the park to find the others, and none of us dared look back.’
‘Did Holly see it?’ Matt said. ‘You said it was over her room.’
‘I should have stayed,’ Rachel pressed one hand into the other. ‘I should have called the police right then. But this thing scared me so I sat in the park and drank cider instead. Got drunk enough so I could face going home. And when I finally did, the rabbit was gone. I popped my head in on Holly, just to make sure she was okay but she was fast asleep. She looked normal. Next morning, though …’ She slowed for a second and blew out one of those breaths pregnant women do. Made an ‘o’ shape with her lips. ‘Next morning she didn’t get up for breakfast. Mum sent me up to get her and that’s when I found her. She’d hung herself, sometime in the night.’
Jo was already on her feet. She hurried over to Rachel and slid her arm around her shoulders, pulling her in. The bench that he and Rachel shared creaked suddenly and dangerously loud. Still, Rachel didn’t cry.
Of course he understood the feeling of walking in on something like that but he didn’t say he understood because he knew how annoying it was when people say that. Because they don’t. Our agonies are pretty much bespoke, after all, and Rachel’s was a particularly vile flavour. All he said was, ‘Rachel. What a terrible experience.’ He put a hand on hers, even though he barely knew her. He had a flash of his old self. The church pastor, comforting the bereaved in the pews of his church, who all look haunted, in their own way.
The gravity of the conversation had dropped the group to silence now. Instead, they heard the sounds of the park. The guys who were playing rugby on the grass suddenly roared as they charged against one another. Matt turned to watch them and saw Barley Street leaning through the spindly trees. Looking oddly closer than it had before. Like it had picked up its petticoat and shimmied a little nearer for the fun.
‘So what did the police say about this figure you saw?’
‘What I expected. That we were drunk. That we must have been imagining it,’ she shrugged. ‘Who knows … maybe they were right.’
‘What?’ Jo’s mouth dropped on a hinge. ‘How can you say that? You know what we saw.’
‘Do I?’
‘Careful Rachel …’ Joyce shook her head. ‘Don’t let the passing years make you cynical. That figure was the manifestation of the negative force that was terrorising your house. I felt it back then and frankly …’ She touched her chest with
