have been a spark but then Joanna came on the scene. Besides, she’d been in the middle of her alcoholic turmoil and her marriage had been shaky – a bit like now. She tipped the bottle of vodka down her throat as she remembered the ghosts of her past. This had been their Halloween meetup place all those years ago, before heading to the school disco.
She got back up onto the bench and glanced through the overgrown weeds. No one was coming; besides, it might not even be Penny. Anyone could send a text from a burner phone, she knew that much, but curiosity had overwhelmed her. She had to come and put an end to all this nonsense once and for all. Who? Marcus, maybe. Isaac – yes. Should she be worried? No. If it was Isaac, he had brought her here for a reason. It was the only place they’d kissed. Their one and only encounter as teens. Only he knew about the kiss and they hadn’t spoken about it since. There’s no way she’d kiss him now.
She huddled up and lay on the damp wood. No one was coming. Not a soul. She turned on her back, taking in the granite clouds as they sped by. Shivering, she zipped up her hoodie, just as a sheet of rain began to fall.
Planting her feet on the earth, she felt her knees wobble as her vision deceived her. She’d had too much to drink. Maybe if she could just get back to her car. She could turn her phone back on and if another message didn’t come through, she could sleep the drink off then drive home. As she stepped in the mud, she almost slid along the edge of the pond into the scum. She let out a little laugh. ‘That was close.’
A rattling noise came from the bushes. ‘Penny, Isaac – I came.’ She half-expected one of them to appear but there was no one. She took a few steps forward and parted the brambles before continuing. That’s when she saw the hole in the ground filled with a coffin. She turned to run and bumped into the hooded figure in the long black coat. As she gasped for breath, a hand came up and injected her swiftly before removing the hood.
‘I… I destroyed that coat,’ was all she could murmur.
‘You destroyed me too, but I’m back.’ The voice wasn’t meek, not like she remembered.
She should have known. She had been recognised despite trying to disguise who she was as the woman before her watched on. Her disguise hadn’t worked that well. She now knew that this woman had also been at the squat while she’d been trying to send Alex packing. ‘You’ve been at my house, watching me on the night I had everyone round for dinner.’
‘When I saw Alex after all that time, I then noticed you and wondered how I didn’t recognise you before that moment. Yes, you’ve changed but not that much. Not so much that I wouldn’t recognise such evil. Did you all like my messages? I thought that would get you all going.’
Cherie went to punch her, but the woman reached for her fist and pushed her back. She stumbled onto her bottom, trying to grip anything as she went down. Her fingers dug into the mud and stone but everything was slimy.
The skies above were beginning to whirl into the trees. What had she been injected with? She never saw things like this when she’d been drinking?
‘A little bit further.’ The voice boomed in her ear, repeating that line over and over again in different voices. She heard Penny saying it, then Isaac, then Marcus followed by Christian and her children. The face in front of her morphed into her own and she backed into the coffin to escape the monstrosity. Sliding a little further, she felt her body drop as she landed in the box. Stiff with fear, the next thing she saw was the lid closing.
No one ever comes here. This is where we come to hang out. We can share a drink without being caught. We can hide from everyone and have a good time.
No one was coming. Maybe she was destined to forever haunt the pond, the new lady in the lake. Maybe the ghost Penny had seen was Cherie coming back from the future, warning herself of what was to come. As the drug took hold, she imagined that she was trapped under a layer