Cold as Ice

Here's my story that won third place in the Friends of Harrogate Library's 2011 ghost story competition. The top three entries were printed in the Harrogate Advertiser on Friday 9th December.

Martha pulled the blanket closer and snuggled down into the sofa. The darkness was softened by the blue glow of computer power buttons. Outside the world was yellow, street lamps reflected by snow. The wind groaned and white flurries sped by.

It had been a busy day. They had started work on the kitchen. She wanted the offices opened by the New Year and had harangued the foreman, Phil, to complete the renovations.

“We don't want to be rushing in here, love,” he had said. “Less’n’ you want flooding.”

Somewhere on the other side of the kitchen’s back wall was Hebble Brook, the stream that babbled through and under Dean Clough, Halifax, once-mighty complex of carpet mills, now home to insurance and software companies.

“Just get it done. And I'm not your love.”

She knew he gossiped about her with his fellow workers. She was known as The Ice Queen. That was fine. As long as she could open on the third of January and get the developers started on the web site, they could mock her to their hearts' content.

There was an exhilarating solitude in the office. It was minus twenty outside, but in here she was cosy and alone. Her ex-husband, Dave, had always said she preferred her own company. It had been worse when their ten-year-old daughter, Liz, had said it too. She had really meant it. Martha had tried not to let it get to her.

Liz was spending more and more time with Dave, and Martha was only slightly ashamed to admit that it suited her – she needed those extra hours to pour into the fledgling business.

After lunchtime Phil had called her into the kitchen. She found all five labourers standing around an alcove they had uncovered. It was a rough cubic foot of darkness. The brook sounded close, bubbling past just a few metres beyond. The space held several small dusty lumps, and in chalk at the back was scrawled:

MARY

SORRY

7/5/1875 – 24/12/1878

Her first thought was, “How long is this going to delay the refurb?”

Ignoring the oversensitive pleas to leave the site undisturbed, Martha picked up one of the lumps and dusted it off - it was a humbug, sticky and ancient.

“Victorian teenage mum?” Phil suggested. “Keeps this Mary a secret, one day she drowns in t’ brook?”

“Aye,” added another. “Mum’s devastated, finds this hole. Maybe she worked here. Makes a secret memorial.”

“Dobson’s humbugs for t’ babbie’s Christmas present.”

Martha had noticed it was snowing. This was the builders’ cue to leave for the day. Phil had asked if she was staying. She had shrugged, and she thought he might try and persuade her to go home, but in the end he said nothing and left.

By five o’clock the blizzard had made travel virtually impossible.

She snuggled further under the blanket and found herself wondering about Mary and her mother. She pictured a harsh December in a nineteenth century Dean Clough, the skies black with smoke, the mills coated in dirty snow.

A haggard young woman and her child walk along the banks of Hebble Brook, grimy grey dresses billowing in the wind, bonnets tied tight. The mother veers into the girl, perhaps accidentally, and knocks Mary into the black water. She does not help, but hurries away, apparently deaf to the bairn's juddering cries who shivers uncontrollably from the icy water. Her squeals and splashes quickly subside as she is washed downstream, and her mum disappears into the winter without a backwards glance.

Martha waited for some strange sound to rise from the humming computers and blowing wind, expecting the scrape of stone from the kitchen, wet footsteps...

“Childish,” she thought to herself. The only sounds were the settling of the mill, the drone of the blizzard.

A loud gust of wind rattled a window. The chattering of tiny teeth a couple of feet from her ear made her heart lurch and start pounding like a drum. The chattering was accompanied by a tremulous moan. She dared not open her eyes. The fluttering drone came right up to her ear, fetid breath tinged with mint broke on her cheek, and the edge of the blanket was lifted. Frigid air washed over her. A tiny quivering body, freezing and damp, climbed in. Martha felt wet hair wiping across her face.

Still she kept her eyes closed. The blanket came back down, sealing them together. She tried to scream, mouth agape, but all she could manage was a thin, empty whistle. The visitor clung on, its damp seeping through Martha’s t-shirt and jeans, sapping her body heat.

Against her breast, Mary gurgled two pitiful, pleading words.

“Mummy. Cold.”

Martha’s heart stopped.