Rampant

The ridiculous thing was that she did want to hang out with him, in fact she couldn’t think of anything more appealing. Shame he’d gone about it such an odd way, with all that spooky nonsense, putting his damned research first.

The fact she could see the disappointment in her own expression didn’t help. Determined not to let him get to her, she rooted around in her makeup purse for a daytime lip gloss. She’d get out, go shopping and see some sights, forget all about him.

That’s not going to be easy.

A great big sigh escaped her, and she paused. She peered at the reflection of the room in the mirror. Could it be true? Had other people really seen a ghost here? She couldn’t deny that she’d felt as if someone else was in the house with her, the day before. And it wasn’t exactly feeling “empty” in here right now. That was just being alone in the new place you are unfamiliar with, she was sure of it. Or was she?

She found the lip gloss she’d been looking for and bent closer to the mirror as she dipped her little finger into the pot and ran it over her lips. Other people had seen it—her—or so Grayson had said. There had been something, and there had been that weird business about thinking she could see him in the shower, when she clearly must have imagined it. Staring at the mirror, her gaze flitted around the reflection of the room as she screwed the lid on to the gloss. She noticed that she could see the landing from here, reflected in a full-length mirror that was beside the bed.

As she watched, something moved across her vision.

She dropped the lip gloss.

Turning around sharply, she looked first at the landing, then at the long mirror, and then back at the dresser, trying to work out what had caught her attention. Nothing.

“You imagined it,” she murmured, trying to convince herself. But the atmosphere in the room had changed and it felt even less “empty” than it had felt before. In fact it was feeling distinctly “full.” Zoë swallowed. There was somebody, or something, here in the room with her. An uncomfortable ball of tension gathered in her chest.

When she forced herself to look into the mirror on the dresser, her breath caught in her throat. There it was again. A shadowy figure reflected in the long mirror behind her. Zoë stared at it. It shimmered, fading in and out. Slowly, she turned around and looked at the full-length mirror. Nothing. When she looked back at the mirror on the dresser, she saw it again, and this time the image was stronger.

It was a woman, a woman in a low-cut, old-fashioned gown, with long black hair falling loose over her shoulders. Zoë swallowed, hard, forcing herself to breathe. It couldn’t be real, and yet it seemed so very real.

The woman’s skin was so pale it was translucent, but her eyes were strong and burning with vitality as she peered across the room. With a feeling of dread, Zoë realized the woman was staring directly her way, and she had tilted her head, as if she was having a good look. Zoë could actually feel the weight of her assessment, and it made a shiver run up her ramrod-straight back. Inwardly she recoiled. She pressed closer against the dresser, unable to move otherwise.

Why? What do you want from me?

The ghostly figure reached out one hand as if to touch her, and then she smiled to herself, faded, and was gone.

The room instantly began to feel less oppressive, but Zoë continued to stare at the now-empty reflection of the long mirror for a long moment, to be sure, before she pushed back the stool she was sitting on, and rose.

“He made this happen,” she said aloud, asserting her presence in the now empty-feeling room. “He put the suggestion in my mind and now I am seeing things.”

Got to get out of the house, clear my head.

She snatched up her bag and cardigan from the bed, and walked down the stairs as slowly as she could—which wasn’t very slowly at all—then grabbed her car keys from the hook by the door with fumbling fingers and bolted out of the house.

Outside, the sun glinted off the sea and the fresh salty air hit her. She breathed deeply, her intake faltering, and then headed for her car at a trot.

Ramming the keys in the ignition, she screeched away from the parking spot. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a blur of blue jeans and Aran sweater. It was the boat builder, Crawford, and he was standing by with one hand lifted in greeting. She’d shot past before she had a chance to fully register his attempt at communication. At the post office she turned the car up the hill, wended her way through the village and was soon at the junction to the main road, the place where she had first met Grayson the day before. Her attention lingered on the spot at the side of the road, above the forest. It was where he had first touched her.

The irony of it was he wanted a ghost, and now she bloody well had a ghost. Sighing, she wondered what it would have been like to spend the day with him, helping him with his research. She didn’t even know what it would involve, but it would have meant being with him. It didn’t matter, she decided. It wasn’t going to happen. Signaling, she pulled the car onto the road to Dundee.

The road ran parallel to the coastline and was high on the cliff, making it feel as if the road was on top of the world. This is what she came for, the countryside. She glanced in the rearview mirror. Carbrey was fading away behind her. And yet it wasn’t…

It felt as if part of her was still there, tugging her back. What was going on back there, now that she was gone?

“Nothing is going on, silly woman,” she told herself with steely determination, focusing on the rolling road. She put her foot down, annoyed. Every time she sped up, a hankering feeling built inside her, as if she should be back there in the village. Her mind wandered. What would have happened with Grayson, had she stayed? Like a naughty little devil prodding her, her imagination made lewd suggestions about the possibilities.

She was halfway to Dundee when her phone bleeped into life on the passenger seat. She pulled up on the green verge at the side of the road and rooted about in her bag until she found it.

It was Gina. “Zoë, I’ve been trying to get hold of you. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I left my phone at the restaurant where I ate last night and I only just got it back. Stop worrying about me, for goodness sake.”

“You always have your phone with you. You’re good with stuff like that.”

Zoë pursed her lips. In ordinary circumstances she was good with stuff like that. She was not in ordinary circumstances. “I thought you weren’t going to call me until later in the week? I’m on vacation, remember?”

“I know, but it kept bugging me what had happened to that Cain Davot, the chef. So I searched for him on Google and as soon as I saw the headlines, the whole sordid story came back to me.”