Under a Ghostly Moon (Jerry Moon Supernatural Thrillers Book 1) (4 page)

He found Sonia crying in the next cubicle with Avril trying to comfort her
.  Her eyes narrowed as he peered around the curtain.  "Sorry, Love..." he began lamely.

"'
Sorry' doesn't cover it.  Not by a long straw!" Sonia replied petulantly.  "I'm so bloody sore I probably won't be able to sit down for a month.  What the hell were you thinking? You know you have to be careful with piercings."

"
Well, no I didn't, to be honest.  I didn't realise there'd be a problem."

Sonia wasn
't listening.  "And that's another thing; twenty-five quid that little skull stud cost me at Dusk-till-Dawn Fashions.  Not much use for anything now is it!"

"
I'll pay for it," Moon fished in his pocket.  "I've got nearly forty quid here, buy something nicer."

"
Nicer? Oh I see, it was tacky, was it? My choice in jewellery isn't good enough for you." Sonia started to cry again.

"
Look, that's not what I meant..." said Moon still holding out his wad of cash.  "Oh, look.  I know you're pretty upset at the moment but I think we were both enjoying the evening up to that point." He fished one of the business cards he used for his journalist work out of his pocket.  "If you feel differently once you've had a chance to think about it just call me.  Okay?"

Sonia took the card, tore it in two, balled it and threw it into a corner of the cubicle
.  "You'll be twice as much history once I've had time to think about it, Mister Jerry bloody Moon!"

"
Sorry you feel that way," he replied sadly, turning to leave the cubicle.

Avril retrieved his card then followed him out
.  "Look," she explained, placing a restraining hand on his arm, "Sonia's just had a really painful and embarrassing experience and it'll take her a while to calm down.  It's too early to try to make peace just yet, you know.  I think you're a good guy, Jerry, but she's had to put up with a few real shits in her life.  If you're willing to stay the distance I think things might work out between you two.  I'll even put in a good word for you.  So hang in there and she might come around."

Moon smiled wryly
.  "I really do like her, you know - enough to give her a little time to think things over anyway.  I'll be hanging around the
Rest
on and off for the next week or so gathering more material for my article so the two of you might catch me there but, if you don't… please call me if there's any sign of a thaw." He nodded towards the cubicle where a miserable looking Sonia could be seen trying to peer through the chink in the curtains.  "You talk her round and I'll owe you big time, I mean it."

Avril smiled
.  "Be careful, I might hold you to that some time."

Moon winked at her
.  "You do that.  Bye Avril - for now." Moon headed out of the Minor Injuries section and through the double doors and out into the night, tiptoeing gingerly over where a drunk had thrown up on the entrance steps.  He felt strangely elated by Avril's words, despite the embarrassing events of the last couple of hours.  As he set off on his lonely way home he failed to notice as six tiny blue balls of light detached themselves eagerly from the neon glare of the hospital doorway and spiralled along above the pavement behind him.

Moon woke the next morning with a painful throbbing in his tongue.  As the events of the previous evening filtered back into his brain he groaned with guilt and embarrassment.  Grabbing a bubble pack of paracetamol from his bedside cabinet, he popped a couple of the pills into his mouth and swilled them down with a mouthful of cold, grey tea from the unfinished cuppa that he had made when he had got home the previous night.  Getting out of bed, he padded naked into his kitchenette where he made some fresh tea and buttered toast.  He took these back to bed with him, switching on the TV as he walked past it.  Making himself comfortable, he sat up in bed and watched a kids' computer graphic adventure series as he gingerly chewed his toast and planned his day.

One big advantage of working in the night pool was that he had a lot of control over his shift pattern so he worked in the middle of the week, allowing himself a longish weekend for his own projects
.  Today being Saturday, he thought the best use of his time would be to work on his article for an hour or so.  Later, he would head out to the city centre for a little therapeutic shopping followed by an early visit to the
Hangman's Rest
to see if he could interview some of the bar staff before it got too busy.

Breakfast
finished, he refilled his teacup and perched himself cross-legged in his executive chair with his keyboard in his lap.  As he booted up his computer he rewound the tape in his Dictaphone and placed the machine next to the monitor.  Unconsciously, he took a deep breath to prepare himself for work and then opened his 'Notes and Ideas' text- file, switched on the tape machine and began to type notes on the previous night's work from what he had recorded.  He had found that this simple exercise helped him to organise his thoughts for the real task of writing that would come later.

Hearing Sonia
's voice on the tape reminded him of the pale softness of her body against his the night before and that intriguing quirkiness, which verged on downright weirdness, that he had found so attractive about her.  He realised that he was actually hoping against hope that Avril would succeed in getting her friend to give him another chance. 
I must be mad
, he thought,
she'll never change her mind after last night
.

As their taped conversation repeated itself, his curiosity was stirred
again by Sonia's strange ambivalence concerning the missing Goths.  It was odd that she had seemed almost afraid to talk about them.  Then he remembered that pale, beckoning ghost hiding in the alleyway.  Okay, there were quite a few spirits who regularly haunted the alleys around the
Hangman's Rest
and the pub itself, not to mention a number of other, less human, entities that prowled Bristol's night-shrouded streets.  However, the way this one had affected his extra senses told him that it was a new addition to the city’s ghostly population. It had also clearly been extremely anxious to communicate with him.  Unfortunately, he was being paid to write about Goth culture, not missing persons.  He couldn't afford to allow his curiosity to jeopardise his work.

He played a little more of the tape and recalled
the odd, nervous glances that Sonia had aimed towards that strange, beautiful trio of Goths he had noticed on the pub dance floor while they had been discussing the missing people.  He wondered if Sonia thought that they were somehow involved in the disappearances. Perhaps he could quiz them about the missing Goths and interview them about their lifestyle at the same time.  They were definitely the sort of characters he should be talking to anyway. Besides, he had a couple of weeks to his deadline so he could probably afford to indulge his curiosity just a little bit.

His notes completed
and a brief outline for the article sketched out, Moon saved his work to his hard drive and backed it up on disk.  Now he felt he could head out to town, satisfied that he had made a decent start.

Anna wasn't on the stairs when he stepped out onto his landing but a tingling in his 'ghost sense' drew his eyes upwards to the balcony above his own, where he could see the pale face of Harry, Anna's father, peering over the banisters of the floor above. 

"
Where is she?"
vibed the morose spook. 
"I only want to tell her I'm sorry... So sorry.  It wasn't my fault.  Her mother drove me to the drink, you know, always nagging me about how I'd never make anything of meself.  Damn the woman!"

Moon had heard this before and
was experienced enough to know it was nothing but self-centred rubbish.  Harry's feigned contriteness was nothing but veiled blame-shifting fired by raging guilt, as awful and destructive in some ways as his drunken rages had been when he was alive.  Anna still hid herself from her father, recognising that this half-hearted repentance was no more than a self-centred sham.

"
Don't kid yourself, Harry.  It was your fault.  You got drunk and threw your four-year-old daughter over the banisters.  You need to accept responsibility for your own actions before you can be forgiven for them, you know.  Even Anna understands that and she's only a child." With a whimper of terror the drunk's spirit disappeared, fleeing like the coward he was from the prospect of further confrontation.

With a snort of disgust, Moon stomped off down the stairs, catching
Anna's tearful face peering out at him from the shadows of Mrs Foley's doorway on his way downstairs.  Great!  He hadn't made it out of his front door yet and his ghostly neighbours' domestic problems already had him in a bad mood!

The city centre was crawling with shoppers.  Moon made a half-hearted effort to window shop around the Virgin Superstore but he couldn't shake his depression.  Eventually, he decided he needed to do something positive about it and, in desperation, he caught a number 54 bus up to the top of Whiteladies Road.  This was a busy shopping street on the side of a hill, which started at the city centre and came to its crest where the University rubbed shoulders with the high value residential areas of Clifton and Cotham.  Once there he popped into a bakery and bought himself a couple of filled rolls and then took the most direct route he knew to St Andrew's Cemetery.

The now disused cemetery was close to Queen's Road, a fairly busy thoroughfare which ran between Whiteladies Road and the affluent area of Clifton Village.  The most recent graves there dated from the early nineteen hundreds and the bombed out ruins of the adjoining St Andrew's Church had long since been demolished and converted into a park-like area bordered by ancient trees.  The cemetery itself had a secluded feel to it, being sheltered by several large yews and other smaller trees.  One side of it was closed in by a Georgian red-brick wall, the opposite by a formidable hedge and a paved avenue ran through its centre.  This shady path was separated from the cemetery proper by spiked iron railings and covered over by small trees trained to ironwork arches, which had earned it the name ‘Bird Cage Walk’.  Moon had discovered it by chance one day, when he had decided to do a bit of exploring in the bits of Bristol that he didn’t know, and now it was one of the few places he knew he could go if he wanted a bit of peace.

Until recently the graveyard had been quite overgrown but a local volunteer group had taken up its cause.  They had cleaned up the graves, which Moon applauded, but they had also cut back the trees or in some instances even removed them. This had saddened him as it had diminished the cemetery's secluded atmosphere.  However they had planted wildflowers, which had mollified him a little.  As he entered through the first archway the twenty-first century seemed to slip away and his spirit relaxed in the peace of the place.  He leaned on the fence and started to eat one of his rolls, watching a fat squirrel playing among the graves.  It eyed him brazenly then scurried through the bars and, resting one foot on his shoe, gazed up at him demandingly.  Chuckling at this boldness, Moon broke off a morsel of bread and gave it to the squirrel, which grabbed it between both front claws and devoured it daintily.  "No wonder you're so chubby!" laughed Moon.  Obviously, being so cheeky paid off in tidbits.  The squirrel, startled by his outburst, ran a short distance back into the graveyard then turned and scolded him loudly.  Moon laughed again, he loved visiting this place; it seemed to patch over a hole in his spirit that was created by the stresses and strains of urban living.

As he threw another morsel to the squirrel he
noticed a strange ripple that passed through the grass and wildflowers and felt an odd buzz of energy, which filled his extra senses with the essence of roots and flowers, of soil and growing things.  He often suspected this was the reason why the place had such a positive effect on him.  He hesitated to think of the beings that now surrounded him as 'fairies', perhaps 'nature spirits' was closer to the mark but, regardless of classification, their presence always had a healing touch to it.  He had never felt drawn to communicate with them because they always seemed busy - not in any kind of driven sense, if anything there was a constant sense of enjoyment and play to what they did - but they obviously had a job to do and he respected that.  For their part they seemed quite happy to share their energy with him, just like they did with any other piece of nature they encountered while they worked at maintaining the fabric of life, or whatever it was they were doing.  Since his first visit he had grown to realise that the graveyard was quietly swarming with them and he treasured the unique mystery of their presence.

He leaned on the fence gazing into the dappled twili
ght over the graves and munched on his roll.  This was what he needed; this place of death but so full of life recharged his soul and healed it from the bruises left by city living.  "Thank you," he whispered to the place in general as he finished his meal, throwing out a few last crumbs for the squirrels.  He rolled up his paper bag into a ball and tossed it into a convenient wastebasket as he headed back out of the past and into the noise and fumes of the present. 
I really must try to come here more often
.  He chided himself, hoping that his busy schedule would allow him to do so.

Moon meandered back through town, browsing in shops along the way and finally arrived at the
Hangman's Rest
just in time to catch the kitchen open.  He ordered a meal with his first pint and sat near the window, watching passers-by as he waited for his order.  The
Rest
was fairly empty except for a few professional bar-proppers, who had probably been there since lunchtime, and a young couple who looked like they had wandered in at random in search of a meal.  The bar throbbed with Death Metal music, which must have been the choice of the skinny Goth lad behind the bar, while muted heavy rock videos from MTV played on a large TV screen on a wall of the main bar and several smaller screens around the pub.  Moon wondered why anyone in his or her right mind would like Death Metal; he supposed that there might be some comfort in knowing that once you finished listening to it life was unlikely to get worse.

When his chili con carne arrived, he found it was surprisingly good for pub fare and he dug in happily, as he watched the early evening crowd arrive
.  He recognised a few faces from the night before, most of them appearing a little less spectacular and a lot more human.  The men wore little or no make-up and the girls were wearing dowdier less constricting clothing; this was obviously 'off-duty' Goth, not party Goth.  Moon made a mental note to mention this compromise with the 'mundane' world in his article.

His meal finished, he wandered up to the bar for a refill
.  The barman was serving one of the bar-proppers and as Moon waited his turn several young Goths came through the door and approached the bar.  To Moon's surprise the barman finished serving the first customer then ignored him studiously and started chatting to and serving the newcomers.  He was wondering whether he ought to complain when a cheery female voice said from behind his end of the bar, "Can I help you?"

"
A baseball bat would come in very handy right now," Moon replied angrily, nodding towards the gaggle at the end of the bar, "but failing that I'd like a pint of Ostrich if that's
not
too much trouble."

The voice
's owner, a diminutive thirty-something woman with short cropped almost white platinum blonde hair, frowned slightly for an instant, then a look of comprehension dawned on her face and she said: "Oh?  Has been Moz being an arsehole again? Hey, Moz, I pay you to serve customers not to cozy up with that band of rejects! First come, first served, remember that?"

Moz looked away from his conversation with a skinny girl with pink and blue dreadlocks and replied,
"Okay, sorry, Kate."

"
Just remember, I've told you twice already, you're here to work not hang out with your mates.  One more time and you're out on your ear." She turned back to Moon.  "Sorry, we employ our staff mainly from the clientele and sometimes they forget which side of the bar they're on.  Ostrich was it?"

"
Yeah, look, are you the boss here?" Moon surveyed Kate's outfit: high-heeled black calf boots, black jeans and a studded black leather vest.  The latter partly revealed Celtic tattoos on both shoulders which flowed into twin dragons on her shoulder blades, at the back, and at the front an impressive cleavage and a physique which hinted at many hours spent in the gym.  She didn't look very much like a Goth, this lady, and she was, frankly, much more impressive than most of the Goths he had met so far.