The Man in Black: A Ghost Story by Mason Jordan

Author:Mason, Jordan [Mason, Jordan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: Jordan Mason
Published: 2016-03-03T18:30:00+00:00

THE WINDOW

John and Violet were out. I knocked hard for a good half hour but no one answered. There was no smell of cooking that day. I took another day off at the butchers; I was still shaken, and so I decided to walk for a bit to clear my head.

That morning I’d noticed the bruises on my neck, deep purple and quickly blackening. I wrapped a scarf around my neck to cover them up. His hands had been forceful, and I couldn’t help but think of why He didn’t kill me there and then. I mean, He tried to drown me, whoever He was. I’d concluded that He must be a ghost. It was clear, there was no other way. I’d always believed in the paranormal, the supernatural. I remember sitting down at the picture house and watching Rosemary’s Baby a few years earlier, how it terrified my dreams, but also how it made me think of the other side. When my dad died I thought I felt him, days later, sitting with me after my mam left.

Perhaps it was all in my mind, the stuff with my dad. It was never a physical presence.

Not like Him.

The walk around the village of Stoney Grange was a nice one. The air was beautiful and cool and smelled fresh. I saw the coal vans doing their rounds, loading the coal into the back yards. I could smell the coal, but it smelled different, inviting. Perhaps the air was cleaner that day.

I walked down to Stone Row and wandered around the shops. I picked up some shampoo and some kitchen cleaner, then walked down to the park and sat for a while. The park was rarely used; even the children grew tiresome of it. A few swings and a slide had been built, but it was mainly made to make use of space. It was probably a money thing. Land came in expensive if it wasn’t miners land.

I sat on a seat down by the woods. I couldn’t keep my hands away from my neck. He had left His mark, like a branding of the skin.

Children wandered about the woods behind me; I heard their taunts. They couldn’t have been any older than fourteen, fifteen perhaps. They stood in the trees, shouting insults at the back of my head. I ignored it and moved, despite not wanting to. That was the thing, they couldn’t harm me physically, but their mouths had a way with words that many adults didn’t even have. Foul mouths. Dirty. I was raised different; the boarding school still had their bullies, but they weren’t as fierce.

I didn’t get bullied in school. My dad made sure I didn’t. Money talks, he’d said once. I remember that more than anything else he’d ever said to me. My mam wasn’t much of a talker, neither.

I walked back up the front of Stone Row, past the phone box and the corner shop, then onto Eden Row, Fife Row, Little Row, and then onto the Rotten Row.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.