2 A Different Shade Of Death (3 page)

Chapter 7

“I
think we need to go into a vision,” Grace suggested.

“A
what?” Charlie asked.

Grace
explained. “When I’ve helped ghosts before they’ve been attached to a physical
item, something that was found in the storage unit where their belongings were.
If I touch them at the same time as the ghost then we are taken into a vision.
It’s like going in to a television show, we can see everything but no one can
see us.”

“And
what’s the point of that?” Charlie asked.

“It
will give us more information about you, perhaps some more details about your
death.”

Charlie
grimaced. “I’m not sure I want to know how I died. Is there another way?”

Pearl
cried out, “Stop being such a pain in the arse! Grace doesn’t have to help you,
she’s got other things to do. For all I care you can float around this shop for
eternity! Just keep out of my way.”

“Pearl!
Are you okay?” Grace looked at the old ghost. Something was wrong, Pearl wasn’t
usually this bad tempered.

Pearl
winced and tried to smile. “Sorry, Grace love, I must be feeling the effects of
whatever killed him. I need to go away for a while. Let me know how you get
on.”

Before
Grace could say another word Pearl disappeared.

“What’s
her problem?” Charlie said, a slight smirk on his face.

“You,”
Grace said without thinking. It looked liked Charlie’s obnoxious side was
returning. She needed to help him as soon as possible, she wasn’t sure how long
she could hold on to her own temper.

She
walked over to the rack of clothes. “Did all these belong to you?”

Charlie
followed her, he examined the clothes. “Yep, these are mine. I don’t know why
Amy would have given them away. Are we supposed to touch them at the same
time?”

“Yes,
it might take a while. Let’s start at the front.”

Grace
placed her hand on a black dinner jacket, Charlie did the same although his
hand melted into the jacket.

He
looked at Grace and raised his eyebrows. “Is something supposed to happen?”

Grace
frowned. “It’s not this jacket. Let’s move on.”

Charlie
gave a dramatic sigh. “This is ridiculous. Can’t you try something else?”

Grace
ignored him. She had to do this, to get more information. She knew that Pearl
had absorbed his symptoms. And she knew that Pearl was feeling pain. She had to
carry on.

“Next
jacket,” she ordered.

Nothing
happened as they went through all the items on the rack.

“Stupid
idea, waste of time,” Charlie muttered to himself. He took his phone out and
looked at it.

“Is
there anything on your phone?” Grace asked.

He
shook his head. “No, it’s blank. It’s just habit I suppose.” He put it back in
his pocket.

Pockets!

Grace
grabbed the first dinner jacket and began to search the pockets. There could be
something inside.

Charlie
wasn’t convinced. He found a chair and sat down, his eyes surveyed the shop
again. “It really is a mess in here, you could at least give it a lick of
paint.”

“It’s
on my list,” Grace mumbled. It wasn’t a nice job going through someone else’s
pockets. She’d already found four used tissues. She made a mental note to wash
her hands.

Grace
dug deeper into a dark blue business jacket. She pulled something out.

“What’s
this? Is this yours?”

Charlie
jumped up and strode over to her. “Give me that! It’s mine!”

His
hand swooped through the air, trying to catch hold of the gold pocket watch
that Grace was dangling by a chain in front of him.

“It’s
beautiful, it must be hundreds of years old. Are you sure it’s yours?”

Charlie’s
eyes flashed with anger. “I found it in my house. It’s mine!”

His
hand swooped through the chain.

Grace
lowered the watch. This was the item that she had been looking for.

Charlie’s
hand froze, his eyes widened. “What’s happening? Where has your shop gone?”

Grace
looked at him and said softly, “We’re going into a vision.”

Chapter 8

The
shop faded, it was replaced by a long hallway.

Grace
put the watch in her pocket, they didn’t need to hold it anymore. She said, “Do
you recognise where we are?”

Charlie
gave a small nod. “Sort of. This is my house, Heathville, but it doesn’t look
like this, or it didn’t when I lived there. Everything looks new.”

Grace
looked at the furnishings and the portraits on the wall. There was a smell of
bees wax in the air. “I think we’ve gone back in time.”

“Why
would we do that? The past has nothing to do with me.”

“I
don’t know, there must be a reason.”

Grace
jumped. A cold feeling washed through her body. It was like someone had just
thrown a bucket of icy water over her. She soon saw what had caused the
feeling.

Charlie’s
finger was raised, it was shaking. “That man ... just walked through you.”

“He’s
a ghost. Look, he’s walking down the hall. His clothes ... they look like
something from the Edwardian age.”

“Eh?”
Charlie said.

“About
two hundred years ago. Oh, he’s coming back this way. Look at his thick
whiskers.”

Grace
steeled herself as the man walked through her again. It wasn’t so bad the
second time. Grace spun around to see where he had gone.

The
Edwardian man turned on his heels and made to retrace his steps. Grace quickly
moved out of the way.

She
said to Charlie, “Looks like he’s pacing up and down, he seems agitated. Is
this definitely Heathville?”

“It
is, the door is just the same. The original owner had that stained glass window
made.”

Grace
looked at the window above the door, it showed a mill set amid green fields.
Her brow furrowed. “I wonder if that man is the original owner, Benjamin Heath?
Oh, he’s taking something out of his pocket.”

Grace
stopped talking when she saw what the item was. She turned to Charlie and
raised one eyebrow.

He
gave an embarrassed shrug. “So it’s the same watch, what of it? I found it in a
desk when I moved in. Everything in the house belonged to me, including the
contents.”

“Hmm,”
Grace replied. She turned back to the pacing man. “His face is very pale. Look,
he’s doing the same thing that you did earlier, putting his hand to his head.”

Another
cold feeling whooshed through Grace.

A
woman in a long dress appeared in front of Grace. The woman caught up to the
man and tugged on his sleeve. “Benjamin! You need to rest! Come back to your
bed, the doctor will be here soon.”

Benjamin
shrugged the woman off. He scowled at her. “I can’t rest. Who will run the
mill? Who will check the cloth? Who will pay the workers?”

The
woman tried again. “We can sort everything out. Stop pacing, please, I beg
you!”

“Pah!
That’s just what you want isn’t it? You want our son to take over my business.
You want my money! I’m not resting. Leave me alone! I need to work. I’m going
to my room.”

Benjamin
let out a cry of pain. He clutched his stomach and bent over. The woman placed
her hand on his back. “Benjamin, it’s getting worse. The doctor is on his way.”

“No!”
Benjamin roared. “Leave me alone! I need to look at my books. Get away from me,
woman!”

Benjamin
pushed the woman away and marched down the hall. At the bottom he turned right
and disappeared.

“That’s
the old library,” Charlie pointed out.

“Follow
him!” Grace said. She ran down the hall and around the woman who was now
sobbing. Grace didn’t think it was good manners to walk through her.

Charlie
was already in the library. He was standing very still. Grace caught up with
him, she noticed the strange look on his face.

She
said, “What’s wrong? Where did Benjamin go?”

Charlie
just raised his hand and indicated towards the other side of the library.

Grace
looked over. Her breath caught in her throat. They weren’t in the past anymore,
they seemed to be in modern times going by the laptop that was on a desk.

Grace
took a step forward, she noticed something, or rather, someone. She looked down
at a man lying on the floor. He was pale. Grace had seen a few dead bodies
before and she was sure this person was dead too.

Charlie
crouched down at the side of the figure. In a quiet voice he said, “It’s me.”

Chapter 9

Grace
crouched down next to Charlie. The room began to fade. A few seconds later they
were back in the shop.

The
both stood up. Charlie said, “That was beyond weird. I never thought I’d see
myself like that.”

“It
must be a shock for you. Can you remember anything at all about how you died?”

He
gave a small shake of his head. “I thought we were going to see something in
the vision. What was that old man in the vision for? What’s he got to do with
me?”

Grace
said, “I think the pocket watch belonged to him before you ... found it. He
seemed to be exhibiting the same symptoms as you. Perhaps he died in the same
way.”

“Do
you still think it could be poison?”

“It’s
possible. Did you start to feel unwell after you moved into Heathville or
before?”

Charlie
shoved his hands in his trouser pockets and stared at the ground for a while.
“I started to feel peculiar a few weeks after moving in. I seem to remember
having an upset stomach, I thought it was food poisoning. But then the
headaches started. And sometimes I’d start a conversation with someone and
forget what I was saying. I put it down to stress.”

Grace
made a mental note of his symptoms, she’d have to Google them later. She needed
to raise a delicate matter. “When we saw your body I couldn’t see any evidence
of physical trauma, could you?”

Charlie
gave her a wry grin. “Like being stabbed in the back? Or bashed in the head
with a blunt instrument? No, I didn’t see that. It looked like I’d fallen
asleep. I wonder if that’s what happened?”

Grace
could feel more questions forming but she wanted to check on Frankie, see if he
had woken up. She told Charlie she wouldn’t be long. He gave her an impatient
look. Grace gave him a look back as if to say he was lucky she was helping him
at all.

Frankie
was still asleep when Grace checked on him. Pearl was sitting at the foot of
his bed, a motherly smile on her face.

Grace
hated to intrude but she needed to talk to Pearl. Pearl felt her presence, she
looked up and put her finger to her lips. She walked away from Frankie’s bed
and told Grace to move out on to the landing.

“How
did you get on? What happened? Did you see him meet a grisly end?”

Grace
replied, “I’ll tell you in a minute. How’s Frankie? And how are you?”

Pearl
waved a hand at her. “We’re both fine, I sorted him out.”

“Did
you do that thing to Frankie that you did with Charlie?”

“I’m
not following.”

“Where
you sort of absorbed the pain from Charlie?” Grace said.

Pearl
looked back at the sleeping Frankie. She turned to Grace and said, “Yes, I did.
I think he’ll be all right now but I’ll keep an eye on him through the night.”

“But
it hurts you, that absorbing thing, I don’t like seeing you in pain.”

“I
can handle it, it doesn’t last long. And it’s better than the alternative.”

“What’s
that?” Grace asked.

“For
you to feel the pain. That’s what I was trying to tell you earlier. When you
help these ghosts you can take on their pains and illnesses, sometimes their
feelings. You have to know how to protect yourself. It took me a while to learn
that when I was alive. If I had a penny for the times that I almost died ...”

Grace
stared at Pearl. How could she be so light hearted about this? “How do I
protect myself? You’re starting to worry me, Pearl.”

Pearl
gave her a smile. “It’s not as hard as you think. The first thing you can do is
distance yourself from the ghost. The second thing sounds weird but it works.
You have to pretend that there’s a great big bubble around yourself, like it’s
protecting you.”

Grace
frowned with concern. “I don’t think I can do that. I don’t think I’m cut out
for this job.”

Pearl
moved closer and gave her a grin. “Just imagine yourself inside a great big
condom! You have seen a condom, haven’t you?”

“Well,
yes, I ...” Grace spluttered. Her cheeks felt warm. If she ever had to imagine
herself inside a bubble it certainly wouldn’t be inside a condom.

Pearl
laughed at her discomfort. “Don’t worry about this absorbing pain thing, I
think I’ve got you covered for this particular ghost. Now, tell me everything.”

Grace
told Pearl all that she had learnt.

Pearl
folded her arms. “There’s a lot more we need to know.”

“I
know. I’m going to do an Internet search.”

“Off
you go then, I’ll stay here with Frankie. Don’t work too late, Grace, you’re getting
that haggard look again. It doesn’t suit you.”

Grace
wasn’t sure if that was an insult or genuine concern. She said bye to Pearl and
went back to the shop.

She
took the business card that Amy Ford had given her and sat down at her laptop
in the kitchen. Charlie sat at her side expectantly.

“Right,
we’ll find out more about you,” Grace said. She typed in the website address
that was on the card.

Ten
seconds later she slammed the laptop lid down. She could feel her body tensing
as she looked at Charlie.

He
moved back a few inches. “What is it? You look furious.”

In
a barely controlled voice Grace hissed, “I’m not helping you, Charlie Ford! I
didn’t realise you were one of them!”