Walking with Ghosts

by a peacock sitting on the ancient Watergate. She slowed her pace after that, so Geordie had to adjust his own to maintain the correct distance between them. There was a moment when something dark and flowing caught his attention, looked like a witch or a spectre, over to his right, by the river. Something over there flapped between two trees, but when Geordie turned his attention to it there was nothing to see. Just fancy and the moonlight.
    Marie left the gardens and crossed the road to Lendal. She walked past the post office and looked in the window of Betty’s, at the people inside eating and drinking. Geordie closed the gap between them. He wished he was inside Betty’s, with a cup of that good coffee in front of him. There was a pianist in a spotlight, playing around with ‘Danny Boy’.
    Marie crossed into Stonegate, walked past the Punch Bowl, and then turned around and looked back at Geordie. She looked long and hard, made sure he saw her, then left the tourist area behind by turning quickly into Back Swine-gate and the maze of passageways and arcades between there and Grape Lane.
    ‘Jesus,’ Geordie muttered to himself, ‘this is asking for trouble.’ And even as he said it a gust of wind returned and flung out the folds of the black cloak of the man who followed Marie into the alley. Bat-like in the moonlight, silent, but obviously not blind.
    Geordie covered the distance to the mouth of the alley in a few seconds, but when he turned the corner there was no sign, either of Marie, or her pursuer. The moonlight didn’t penetrate into these passages, they were narrow, and the walls that bordered them, high. There was the occasional lamp, and as Geordie ran through the maze, there was also the occasional tourist or passer-by. After a few minutes he stopped and listened. Instead of running blindly, he reasoned, he might hear footsteps, and explore the direction from which they came. But he heard nothing.
    He made his way back to Stonegate and started again. Taking a different route, and making sure he explored every alley and cul-de-sac along the way. His heart was pounding loudly in his chest, and he was breathless with anticipation and fear. The wind had returned now, and was whistling around the arcades and threatening to lift tiles from the rooftops. It was roaring and clamorous, blowing dust and mortar from the medieval walls and buildings. Geordie strained to hear any sounds above or below the wail of the wind. And there was something there, close by.
    It didn’t sound like Marie’s voice. It was a long, piercing scream, the kind of anguished cry that took Geordie back, momentarily, to his time in the children’s home. He would hear cries like that from time to time in the night, from new boys and girls, or from someone dreaming of the past or the future.
    But this wasn’t about the past or the future, it was of the moment. He turned into a small yard, and as he did so the scream that brought him there died a series of deaths and broke up into whimpers. There was the back of the black cloak. The man who was wearing it had the hood up, and his arms outstretched, so the cloak looked like a pair of ribbed wings. Marie wasn’t visible at first. Geordie had to move to one side before he saw her huddled in the corner of the cul-de-sac. Her face was white like the moon, her eyes large and staring up at the face of her attacker. She was transfixed and didn’t notice Geordie at all.
    The cloaked man moved forward a step, and Geordie caught sight of the green rope that trailed from his right hand. The wind fell and rose again, whipping the black cloak around the figure of its wearer, and Geordie screamed something unintelligible, even to himself as he hurled himself at the man and tried to hold him back from Marie.
    But Geordie didn’t make the contact he had hoped for. The black cloaked figure heard or felt him coming, half turned and ducked as the force of Geordie’s body came towards him. Geordie glanced off the man’s shoulder, and although he grasped for the material of the cloak, he found himself falling away, and landing in a heap on top of Marie. As he fell he put out his right hand to save himself, and he saw and heard his forearm snap twice as the weight of his body came down on it. There was no pain, only a sinking feeling as he realized that the hand would be useless to him in the fight that lay ahead. Then there was nightmare agony, a rush of blood from the sleeve of his jacket, and