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  ‘The one clue that it had been she who had done that, would be the presence of accelerant on her skin. The only one of our possibles who had managed to fit in a bath or a shower after the tragedy was Mrs Sage, who came to the door garbed in a dressing gown when you arrived originally.’

  ‘That’s brilliant, sir.’

  Falconer almost blushed. ‘Not really, Carmichael. In fact, if I may borrow a phrase, ‘Elementary, my dear Watson.’’

  ‘Who?’ Carmichael’s expression, despite his Frankenstein get-up, was blank.

  Rebecca Weston closed the door of number one Chestnut Close behind her, conscious that it was almost midnight, and giggled quietly. She was just a little bit tiddly.

  ‘Becky!’ called her mother from the living room, having stayed up to see her safely back home. ‘Have you missed some fun and games tonight!’

  ‘Why? What’s that?’ asked Rebecca, tottering into the living room, a victim of her own slight inebriation and a pair of new, too-high heels. ‘Nothing ever happens round here.’

  ‘That waste-of-space next door has only gone and got himself murdered,’ chirruped her mother, in the glee of an attack of Schadenfreude.

  ‘What, Larry? Murdered?’ Rebecca was absolutely astonished.

  ‘Yes. And by that woman from number four.’ Brenda was full of herself, being the bearer of such extraordinary tidings, but her bubble of self-importance was about to be burst.

  ‘Well, poor old Larry. He was a bit of a laugh, wasn’t he’ was Rebecca’s only comment, delivered in a very off-hand manner, before she tottered off upstairs to bed, so hard-hearted can be the young in the face of tragedy.

  DS Davey Carmichael arrived home to find there were still stragglers at the Halloween party at his house, the progeny of parents who did not mind their children staying up to the witching hour on such a date, the adults having settled themselves down in the Carmichael household with eagerly accepted glasses of wine.

  The man of the house’s arrival had caused a small flurry of disquiet, but the visitors soon realised who he was beneath his disguise, and held out their glasses eagerly for a refill from their generous hostess.

  ‘Hey, there’re still apples!’ declared the new arrival, heading towards an old tin bath, two-thirds filled with water, with apples floating in it. ‘I’m going to have a ‘bob’.’

  As he got down on his hands and knees to indulge in the time-honoured Halloween pastime of bobbing for apples, his wife shook her head in disbelief, and a large grin split her face, as she hoped that her husband would never grow up.

  When Falconer next entered his sitting room, a room lit only by the dying light of the fire, he switched on a lamp and observed the tangled heap of multi-coloured fur in front of the fireplace. A head or two rose languidly to see why there was extra light, and he smiled at his heap of sleeping pets. How good it was to come home to their relaxing presence.

  Crossing the room to the sideboard, he poured himself a small brandy, then moved to his favourite armchair, to sit down for a while before he retired to bed.

  The pile of cats squirmed slightly to achieve total comfort, then settled back down to sleep.

  Curtains

  David Rogers

  One

  All photographs of her are turned face down. Empty lager cans surround the sofa. Cigarette ends rest like confetti dotted across the floor. Tissue papers moulded into dense wet mounds by snot, blood, and tears congregate on the coffee table.

  It's been four days.

  I want to make my way to the bedroom to try to get some sleep, knowing I'll be tossing and turning with the absence of her until the sun comes up. Our bedroom now serves more as an altar than as a resting place – a spot where I can keep her things as she left them and worship them as if they were religious artefacts. When I press myself against her clothes I can linger with the scent of her. I can visualise her looking back at herself in the vanity mirror with me hovering at her shoulder.

  Her smile would bend my own lips upwards, then I would rest them on her neck.

  Even in her absence, the grip she has on my soul remains unflinching.

  I am dense with loneliness.

  I leave the sofa and every move I make is agonising. I carry the weight of her everywhere I go – her laugh, her touch, the sight of her leaning against the doorframe in high-heeled shoes. The delicacy that is her kiss. I have to drag all of this behind me as if I am Christ, and recollections of her are the cross I am to be nailed upon.

  I go to the kitchen to lock the back door before the sight of someone sitting in the garden stills my approach.

  I contract my chest to inhale but nothing happens.

  I examine the unmistakable contours of a figure slumped in one of our patio chairs. I reach for the handle and realise then that the door has already been opened.

  I stare at what I think might be the top of a man's head, perhaps the curve of a slumped shoulder, the length of an arm draped over the side of a chair.

  Still pulling the weight of her behind me, I slip into the garden and creep towards the shadow. I want to call out to whoever it may be but I can't find my voice.

  I haven't spoken since she left.

  It takes a panicked thrust forwards for me to confront the figure. In the ivory light of the night's sky, the skin covering my former self has turned a shade of blue. My tongue hangs out of my mouth, like a rotting slab of meat.

  I am dust mites, I am dirt.

  I regard myself from the vantage point that death has given me. My heart no longer beats, and why should it? Blood doesn't move. Synapses no longer spark. Flies gather on my eyelids and spider eggs line my nostrils.

  Pills and empty bottles litter the table in front of my body.

  It's been four days.

  I return to the house. I enter the living room an emotional wreck. I find a quiet corner to sulk in, sticking myself to the ceiling and the wall, confused and alone and suddenly, without warning, dead, dead tired.

  Two

  All my limbs are phantom limbs. I’d swear I still had arms and legs but all it takes is for me to drift around the room, to the mirror in the hallway, for me to confirm that this isn't the case. My vision crackles, pops, and blurs, as if everything that I see is now being projected in front of me from spools of old film.

  Existence in the afterlife is a word on the tip of a tongue, but for all eternity.

  I cruise around the house at the mercy of my own sense of worthlessness, no better dead than I was alive. I spend a lot of time distracting myself with thoughts of her; her movement, her style, the way she kept me grounded. When it all gets too much to bare I slither underneath the stairs and calm myself by envisioning a pair of lungs filling then emptying out, spit dampening my lips, hands opening and closing.

  I meditate, in other words.

  When in the right frame of mind, I see how far I can push myself. Occasionally I manage to make the curtains sway. Once or twice I'm able to flip the light switch on and off but afterwards I'm so drained that I feel as if I may die all over again.

  I float around the kitchen, wishing I could taste decaying apples propped up in the fruit bowl. This house is now a prison. If I expose myself directly to daylight, my edges vibrate rapidly and I'm filled with a pain that swells from the centre of whatever I am. If I try to leave at night, an unknown force pulls me backwards and I am left in a heap on a concrete slab next to the corpse I left behind.

  I feel embarrassed when I leak ectoplasm onto the floor, the sofa, the door, but in the throes of my misery, I can't seem to help myself.

  Death has shackled me here with no chance of escaping.

  I kick back and drift. I swim to the window to look out of it, something I can only do after the sun has set. I watch Donovan backing his car out of the driveway. I turn my attention to Annette as she stands waiting for her dog to piss on our lawn. It cocks a leg and evacuates itself and halfway through it lifts its head and looks in my direction. It stares straight at me. It barks a few ti
mes before Annette has the good grace to tug on its lead and pull it back indoors.

  It starts barking at me through the walls. On top of everything else, and for a reason I can't quite place, this sends me into an uncontrollable rage. I whip myself around the room quicker and quicker, slopping ectoplasm all over the floor and walls, spreading my death all over the living room.

  I shove against the television and it rocks to the edge of the table it stands on before falling to the floor. Shattered glass fans out around it.

  I stop spinning and gather myself in a throbbing sphere in the middle of the room. I grit my non-existent teeth, curl my transparent hands into a tightening noose and think to myself, over and over: fucking dog! FUCKING DOG!

  The dog yelps once and the barking stops.

  Annette calls out the name of her pet over and over and over again.

  Three

  My wife's homecoming is marked by headlights sweeping across closed curtains. I enter a vent screwed into the wall of our bedroom and spiral through the inner workings of our home, reappearing shortly afterwards in the hallway. Ectoplasm tendrils stretch from the grill I leave behind in a long gooey trail. I rush towards the living room unsure of what it is I should do, only managing to still myself when I hear her key entering our lock. I dart towards the door and press myself into it, smearing myself across its surface like butter on bread, exerting all the energy I have left to keep her at bay, to spare her from what is waiting for her on the patio, to spare myself the embarrassment of her finding me in such a state.

  The handle is turned downwards and I feel her nudging her body against the other side of the door. She pushes against me (whatever I am) and I open hands that are no longer there to push back against her.

  She says my name and I melt.

  She manages an inch; the door opens long enough to pull her scent through a gap between it and the wall – the perfume she’s worn every day since we first met.

  My hold on the door gives way and she almost falls into the room. She briefly examines the area around her feet for possible obstructions before slipping the handbag off her shoulder and dropping it onto the sofa.

  She tests the air with her nose before the sound of her mobile ringing distracts her. She answers the call and says ‘Yeah, I’m in the house now. Dunno where Paul is but it smells like he hasn’t taken out the rubbish for a while.’

  She takes off her coat.

  I’ve missed you.

  I watch her kicking off her shoes and heading into the hallway, saying, ‘this won’t take long. I know exactly what to pack.’

  She rattles upstairs and I follow close behind her, nipping at her ankles, hungry to feel the weight of her in arms I no longer possess.

  ‘About half eight,’ she says. ‘But I’ll meet you a few streets away, just in case.’

  We head into the bedroom and she walks to the wardrobe. She bunches clothes still on hangers in her hands and throws them onto the bed.

  ‘No idea,’ she says. ‘Out with friends? Lying in a ditch? Why should I care?’

  She pulls reams of underwear out of one of her drawers.

  ‘Anyway, I better go. I’ll see you later.’

  The person on the other end of the call says something that makes her laugh. I wrap tentacles around her but the particles that make up whatever I am simply dissipate.

  She hangs up and drags a suitcase from the top of the wardrobe. I’m forced to watch her preparing for whatever trip she’s planning to take. She fills the outer compartments of the suitcase with toiletries, creams, powders and make-up.

  I can’t help but think of who she’d be wearing such things for if not me.

  I follow her to the bathroom. She inspects herself in the mirror. She pulls at her cheeks and examines all the capillaries stitched into her eyes – little red lines that I am so in love with. I stare into the fleshy chasm of her mouth and consider all the times I’ve visited her tongue, her lips, her throat.

  When she gets downstairs I cling to the back of her neck and embrace her with all my tentacles. From here I see her nostrils flare as she takes in the scent I've left behind. She frowns and looks towards the kitchen.

  She makes her way towards my resting place, shuffling forwards gradually, waving a hand in front of her face.

  It's been eight days.

  I am decay.

  I float in front of her and attempt to reach out to her in any way I can.

  'Paul?' she whispers.

  I'm here , I reply, but she doesn't hear me. Then: Who were you on the phone to just now? And where are you planning on going?

  She walks slowly through the house, passing boxes and glasses and food containers. She suddenly takes in a quick little breath; a sign of shock brought on by the clattering and swooping of a glass bottle tumbling and rolling away.

  She can see my outline, I think. She can smell the shell I've left behind.

  She sobs as she traverses the kitchen, then the patio, my crypt; the place where I fester.

  She says my name a few more times, for what it's worth.

  Why did you leave me? Why did you cause all of this?

  Life and death are two sides of the same coin.

  I loop a loving tendril around her waist and she passes through me as if I'm not really here, and who knows, maybe I'm not.

  She stands behind the chair I'm slumped in, a hand on her heart, and the machinery of her breathing struggles to keep itself in order.

  She says my name again and I savour the sound of its syllables.

  Her phone rings. She digs it out of her pocket and stares at the screen, making no sense of it, and the sick green glow illuminating her face proves to be no hindrance to her beauty.

  I sweep across her shoulders. I make an effort to pull her away from my body, using the techniques I've been practicing around the house since I died.

  I imagine her to be the edges of a curtain I can manipulate with invisible hands.

  She answers the phone. I lean against its earpiece and hear a voice I can't quite place, the voice of a man, saying: Jane, what's wrong? Where are you? Is everything ok?

  She breaks down and cries, a hand spread across her eyes, and every so often she gags on the scent of my effluence.

  If I still had tear ducts, I'm sure I'd cry too.

  What am I, anyway? I mean I know I'm dead, but what am I, exactly?

  I entwine several of my theoretical limbs around her trembling body, for I am only here in theory.

  ' Jack, I need you. Come quickly,' she whispers into the phone.

  She falls back into the house. She drops onto the sofa and supports her head with arms steadied on slight legs.

  I sit next to her and play with her hair.

  Four

  Even being dead, I can sense something passing between them – a telepathy of their own design. She tries to get out what she wants to say but can only produce strange utterances that make no sense.

  She looks towards the garden. She points in the direction of my body.

  He unfurls my wife from the grip she's put on him and starts walking through the living room. I follow close behind. I can tell how unsure of himself he is by how slowly he’s creeping through the house, how cautiously he rests each step upon the floor.

  He tells my wife that everything will be OK.

  I fly behind a box on the coffee table containing a few of her old books and I focus all my energy on attempting to topple it over. A sense of urgency lends me more power than I’ve had for a while and with an excruciating rush of effort I cause the box to fall from the table and decant its contents onto the floor.

  The two of them cry out in terror. He passes his arms through the air in front of him.

  I am fed by his fear. I'm extracting some sort of perverse nutritional value from it.

  I concentrate on quickening his pulse. I oscillate in front of him. I get close enough to feel the warmth of his breath billowing out the blanket of my existence.

  He turns to my wife to
say: 'Something's wrong.'

  I pinpoint the power of my thoughts and aim them at his chest like arrows. Spit froths at the corners of his lips. He drops to his knees and holds a hand on his heart, his other hand held out for my wife to take.

  He falls and hits his head against the table.

  Blood is instantaneous.

  Jane screams and runs to him and cups his head in the crook of her elbow. I concentrate on illuminating the bulb above us for her to get a better luck at the pain she's caused.

  We get covered in sparks.

  Her eyes bulge and her eyelids flutter and she loses consciousness.

  I approach her tentatively, and when I'm close enough I drape myself over her legs, her belly, her chest, her neck. I drift around her hands and her fingers. I journey into one of her nostrils and reappear from one of her ears.

  I fill her with my soul.

  I become one with her flesh.

  I am her and she is me and we are one and the same, now, forever, and always.

  Five

  I thread our ends together. She gestures as if to speak but I shush her with my mind.

  Wait, I whisper. I want to show you something.

  I drag her through the sarcophagi of destroyed buildings and singed trees. We swoop into the air and turn loops around an old antennae. I ease her into position on the roof of a gutted farmhouse.

  I point her towards the sky, towards a red moon. The nights are now all ours. Everything is waiting to be taken by the two of us.

  It's been four hundred years.

  I love you so much, Jane, I say, but all she can do is look at me.

  The Pumpkin Hacker

  Helena Fairfax

  The land surrounding King Games was as well protected as a fortress. Rosalie Miller presented her ID to the forbidding security guard and watched him check her documents with painstaking thoroughness. Finally he waved her on, and she eased her sleek white car through the gate.