Ghost Ahead Read online

  GHOST AHEAD

  SPIKE BLACK

  © 2016 Spike Black

  All Rights Reserved

  Published by High Concept Books

  Spike Black Logo by Richard Wendt

  To be the first to know about new releases, and to receive a free and exclusive horror short story, join Spike Black’s mailing list at spikeblack.com/subscribers

  Also by Spike Black:

  Don’t Look Inside

  Leave This Place

  Avert Your Eyes

  Blink Dread

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

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  About the Author

  Also by Spike Black

  Advance Reader Team

  * * *

  CHAPTER 1

  He was on the final stretch toward home when at last a song came on the radio that he actually liked. Heavy rain hammered its relentless rhythm on the car roof, the heating was on full blast to combat the two a.m. chill, and there was the usual ringing in his skull caused by the cacophony of saws that soundtracked his shift. But from the moment James Brown screamed the intro to I Feel Good, none of that mattered quite so much anymore.

  The windshield wipers waved in sync with the music as Garth Harrison turned up the volume. His head tilted in time with the beat. His fingers drummed a rhythm on the steering wheel. Tall trees rushed by on both sides, faster and faster, silhouetted by the moonlight. As the silver Nissan crested the hill, affording him a view of the street-lit town below, Garth felt the weight of the last ten hours falling away, his brain-numbing headache dissipating, his thoughts turning to Wendy - soft, sweet Wendy - and of creeping into the warm bed beside her.

  And then it hit.

  The crunching impact jolted the car, jerking him against his seat belt, an almighty thump heralding the presence of another, and Garth watched in open-mouthed, unthinking terror as an enormous beast rolled up the hood and shattered the windshield.

  He yelled out, slamming on the brakes. The huge lump was thrown forward into the road, hitting the tarmac with a sickening thud.

  He fell back into his seat. A dizzying moment of nothingness. An odd, muffled silence inside his head. James Brown, and the rain, and that thing - the creature - were gone. Even the factory-formed brain hum was distant now.

  Chloe. His mind flashed back seventeen years, to the single happiest moment of his life, and there she was, in his arms, a perfect newborn, staring up at him with watery eyes. Eyes so large that it would take until her teens for her face to grow into them.

  My beautiful Chloe.

  He crashed back to reality, his mouth agape, his breath trapped in his throat, his body stunned into frozen immobility. He stared ahead through splintered glass at the shape in the road.

  The motionless shape.

  Go, his mind implored him. Get out there.

  But fear rooted him to his seat. A stupendous, crippling fear of what he might find if he ventured out there.

  It’s a deer, that’s all.

  No. Too large for that.

  A stag, maybe.

  His foot hovered over the gas pedal, tempting him with the option to flee. But that was out of the question, he knew that with absolute certainty. He was a good person, a decent soul, a family man. A father, for Christ’s sake. People like him didn’t just drive away after an incident like this, even if the thing out there was just an animal.

  Which, of course, it was. It had to be. He dare not even contemplate that it was anything else.

  But it’s dead, he thought. There’s nothing I can do for it now.

  He willed it to move, to show any sign of life, until a contradictory thought jostled to the front of his mind and he imagined having to put the poor creature out of its misery…

  Ugh. His stomach rolled. Ridiculous, he knew, given what he did for a living. And yet here he was, glued to his seat, hands gripped tight to the steering wheel as the Godfather of Soul repeatedly proclaimed just how bloody good he felt over the swish-squeak of the windshield wipers and the thunderous battering of rain on the car roof.

  Garth gritted his teeth so hard it made his jaw ache.

  Chloe. Just the thought of her was a soothing balm for his frazzled mind. The wonder of her newly-formed perfection; her tiny fingers grasping for his pinkie digit. The profundity of the moment had hit him with such clarity, there in the mundane surroundings of the recovery room: this is what it’s all about. Nothing else matters.

  In the split-second of cleared vision afforded by the windshield wipers, through the mosaic of shattered glass, he saw once again the lump in the road. His stomach muscles tightened. It was more bear-like than anything else, but of course, that was impossible. There were no bears in England.

  Not in the wild, anyway.

  So what the hell was that thing?

  He steeled himself, depressed the seat belt release button and opened the car door. But the thought of what awaited him beyond the bubble of his vehicle - the unforgiving night, the incessant rain, the specter of fresh death - kept his body nestled in the sanctuary of its seat.

  Coward, his inner voice barked. Goddamn coward. Get the hell out there.

  He sprang out onto the tarmac almost before, it seemed to Garth, his brain had received the message that he was going to move at all, leaving him standing there on weak legs, his feet uneasy in his shoes. The surface of the road seemed to shift beneath him, not unlike the odd period of adjustment he often felt after going ice skating with his daughter.

  He edged forward, his eyes fixed on the dark mass up ahead, an imperfect dome that rose out of the solidity of the road, looking more bear-like than ever. What was the word for bear-like? He used to know. Lupine? No, that was wolves. Vulpine? Ovine?

  Perhaps, he reasoned, there had been an incident at the Chalkstone zoo. An escape plan executed by the animals in the early hours. Maybe he would soon witness an alpaca loping across the highway, or the silhouette of an orangutan swinging gracefully through the trees.

  The rain-soaked sheen of the tarmac stretched before him like a daunting sheet of black ice. He thought he caught the shadow of his reflection in the road as he pressed forward. Approaching the slumbering creature, his heart hammered so hard in his chest it made his vision pulse. The beam of his car’s headlights picked out a shiny hide made slick with rainwater. An incredible wave of relief washed over him - it was an animal, after all. Maybe not a bear, but…

  Ursine. That was it.

  From his vehicle, which now seemed a thousand feet away, James Brown growled I Feel Good, and Garth shared his sentiment for the briefest of moments, the vocals giving way to an alto sax solo that provided the funk soundtrack to his trudge across the tarmac. He placed his boot on the hide, ready to flip the great beast, and as his foot slipped with a whistling scrape of rubber on plastic, the sickening truth hit.

  No. Dear God, no…

  What he had touched was a slick black raincoat, and his boot was in fact resting on the broad back of a large man.

  A bolt of terror shot through him, his reality beginning to fracture, the ground sailing toward his face then impossibly back again as if the tarmac was a wide belt of elastic. For a moment he thought he had fainted, but then he was back
, consciously inside his body, and he was upright, just like before, with his boot resting on another human being. An image formed in his mind: a proud hunter posing for a photograph with his kill.

  Disgusted, he kicked out, turning the body. Short, fat arms sprawled out across the road, a round plate of a face staring up at him, its features encased in the expanse of blubber that was the man’s head.

  His eyes were unblinking, pooling with rainwater. A halo of liquid was forming rapidly around his head, black in this light, like an oil slick. The center of his forehead had collapsed inward, like the shell of a hard-boiled egg when bashed with the back of a spoon. Random chunks of meat decorated the road around him, as if the man had been carrying a bag of offal when he was hit. It was only when Garth crouched down over the body to get a closer look that he realized the chunks had been pieces of him.

  He reached out in his panic, his mind racing, his fingers feeling nothing where the surface of the man’s torso should have been, dipping instead into what seemed like a pot of warm goo. He gasped, yanked his hand back and lost his balance, tumbling off his feet into the road. He righted himself, his fingers stuck together with a mixture of blood and guts. He shuddered, wiping his hands down his jacket.

  Another funk classic began playing on the car stereo. He tried to identify the track even in the midst of this horror. Something to ground me, he thought. An anchor in reality.

  Stuffing a hand into the pocket of his jeans, he grasped for his phone, his fingers numb and trembling. The phone fell out onto his lap. He picked it up, staring at the screen, fumbling with the keypad. His breath hitched in his throat, and he realized he was crying. Through a film of tears he hit three digits, then paused.

  The operator would ask for his location. He looked around for a landmark and noticed that he was near the Eldham Road bus stop. The beam of his headlights reflected in the glass of the bus shelter directly opposite him. Had he been waiting for a bus? Garth wondered. At this hour?

  Superstition. Yes, of course. How could he forget? Superstition by Stevie Wonder.

  God, he loved this song. A real classic. One of the best of the seventies. A chill came over him as he realized he would probably never be able to listen to it with anything approaching enjoyment ever again.

  His finger hovered over the call button. What are you waiting for?

  He took a deep breath. Okay. This is it.

  And this really was it, he suspected. All the good he had achieved in his forty-two years on the planet had been eclipsed by this one event. This single night was going to destroy the world he had carefully built up around himself, and would forever alter the way his daughter looked at him. Nothing was ever going to be the same again.

  He placed the pad of his finger on the call button.

  No! he suddenly thought. I can’t have this! It’s not fair!

  What had he done wrong here, exactly? He had been paying attention to the road. He had not been speeding. The guy had sprung out of nowhere, into the path of the only car on the entire stretch of road, and there was nothing Garth could have done about it.

  Tendrils of panic knotted in his stomach. What now? All the ambulances in the world couldn’t help this guy. He was dead.

  And I’m a murderer.

  Except that he wasn’t, not really. But that’s how Wendy and Chloe would see it. And the rest of the world. The townspeople, the courts. Vehicular homicide, wasn’t that what they called it? Or was that only in America? Still, he’d go to prison. Ten, fifteen years, maybe. His life destroyed, his family in tatters - and for what? Nothing could change the fact that this poor guy’s guts were pouring out over the tarmac.

  Garth stared at the rain-soaked screen of his phone.

  Call now. Just do it.

  Quickly.

  Quickly!

  * * *

  CHAPTER 2

  Pulling onto the driveway, Garth reached across the dashboard and pressed a button. He winced as the garage door jerked noisily into action, lifting and retracting with a metallic rattle, and coming to rest with a juddering thud. He looked up at the bedroom window and waited, his breath stuck in his throat, for the light to come on. After a few moments, he exhaled. He was in the clear.

  He drove carefully forward, the tires crunching on gravel, the realization hitting him that, drunk on terror as he was, he no longer trusted his own judgement. His foot trembled on the gas pedal as he eased into the garage, navigating into a space that seemed infinitely smaller than it had the day before. It was with considerable relief that he parked the car, turned off the engine and hopped out. In all the craziness he hadn’t even thought to assess the damage to his vehicle. But it had got him home okay, so it couldn’t be too bad, right?

  A stabbing feeling attacked his guts as he saw the crumpled fender, and, moving around to the front of the car, his heart sank. He was in a whole lot more trouble than he had anticipated.

  He knelt, surveying the sorry state of his vehicle: a smashed left headlight (the bulb was intact), a broken grille, a cracked front bumper, a mangled license plate, a dented hood, and of course the shattered windshield. All superficial damage, yet clear signs of an accident nonetheless. There simply had to be lots of debris at the scene of the crime. Enough for the police to be able to identify his car, he was sure of it.

  His mind whirled. His stomach tipped over.

  He had to do something, and fast. He would have to get the car repaired before anyone saw. Anyone at all.

  “Oh my God!” a voice cried from behind him. “What happened?”

  He jumped and spun around.

  Wendy stood there, bleary eyed in her night dress. “Are you all right?” Her usual pale face had turned almost translucent with alarm.

  He clambered to his feet and turned to her, still hoping that his body could shield the worst of it from her view. “I’m fine. Hello. Everything’s fine.” But it was clear from the distress etched on her face that she had seen too much already. “You should be asleep,” he said.

  “I was. But I looked at the clock and you still weren’t home…”

  “Well, I’m here now.” It was incredible to him how good-looking she was. Not many women could pull off the ‘rudely awoken in the middle of the night’ look, but Wendy was a natural beauty, and even the slightly disheveled look kind of suited her.

  She came over to assess the damage for herself. “Garth, what the hell?”

  “I know, it looks bad, but seriously. Don’t worry.”

  “Don’t worry? You’re shaking.” She reached out to him and stopped when she saw his jacket. She gasped, her hands flying to her mouth.

  Garth looked down at the smears of blood. “Oh, it’s, it’s nothing…”

  “Do you need a doctor? Should we get you to the hospital?”

  “No, really, it’s not mine. It’s…”

  It’s just the blood of some guy I murdered.

  Hell, what was his lie? He hadn’t had the wits about him to formulate one on the way home, should this scenario arise. His brain scrambled for a response. “I hit a deer.”

  Her face fell as if it was the worst thing he could have confessed. “Aw, you didn’t? Oh no, the poor thing. Did you put it out of its misery?”

  “Uh, yeah. I mean… you know… it was definitely dead.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Because you can’t just leave it out there to die.”

  “I know that.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You did do the honorable thing, right?”

  The honorable thing. The weight of her words hung in the air for a moment. How was he supposed to respond to that?

  But Wendy was distracted now, examining the damage to his car, and the look on her face turned his stomach. He knew that look. It had only been a year since she’d resigned, but Wendy still thought of herself as a police officer.

  “Weird,” she said, kneeling down to study the vehicle up close.

  He swallowed hard. “What?”

&
nbsp; “There’s no sign that you hit a deer.”

  Garth snorted. “The smashed up car is a big one.”

  “No, I mean… there’s no fur. I attended my fair share of deer collisions, let me tell you, and there was always fur embedded in the paint, or tufts of it stuck in the bumper. It was how we determined point of impact.”

  “Well… sorry to disappoint.”

  She glanced up at him, and the sliver of suspicion in her eyes melted his resolve. He wasn’t sure, in that moment, if he could continue this charade. Thinking about it, had he ever lied to his wife? Not just silly white lies but a real, proper, serious, grown-up lie? He didn’t think so.

  So what makes you think you can pull it off now, numb nuts?

  And it pained him to think it, but he’d always been such a terrible actor. She’d always seen straight through him.

  Dear God. What had he done? As she continued to stare, his future flashed before his eyes. He saw, in her look, a thousand horrible arguments, the slow and agonizing disintegration of their relationship, the end of their marriage, the resentment in his daughter’s eyes. Panic hit him hard, the contents of his untidy garage beginning to rotate in his vision. A wave of nausea washed over him.

  He punched a button mounted on the wall. “I need some fresh air.” He ducked beneath the opening garage door and dashed outside.

  He ran to the end of the street, the rain battering him, his heart slamming upward into his throat. He turned onto the main road, the footpath dissolving into gravel before disappearing altogether as he tackled the hill that led out of town.

  He got a stitch and slowed to walking speed. He hadn’t realized just how unfit he’d become as he approached middle-age. Keep going, he implored himself. Faster. Before it’s too late.

  And it wasn’t too late, not yet. There was still time to do the right thing. He could call an ambulance, own up to hitting the guy when the police arrived. He came out of nowhere, officer. There was nothing I could do…