Haunted Read Online Free Page B

that I was, and so after a while I left it to
haunt nothing more public than my own collection. I present, for
your reading pleasure, the debut of…
     
The Old Pier
     
    It was a quiet night. There had been too many
of those lately; they were beginning to add up not to weeks, not to
months, but to the first beginnings of years. Ever since Crawford
Cove had started its metamorphosis from the lowly grub of a working
fishing village into the small social butterfly of a town which it
had become, with its new suburbs of red-tiled white villas
stretching out along the emptiness of sand which used to be the
Long Beach. Ever since the summer people came, and started driving
away those who had been living there for countless calm years in
the comforting grip of their own tragedy and joy.
    Terry's bar, once packed with jovial
fishermen in to celebrate a good catch or drown the sorrows of a
thin one, had been increasingly sparsely populated until it was
down to this, now - old Adam looking for tuna in the bottom of his
whisky glass at the darkest corner of the long counter, Will and
Georgy arguing pointless politics - for neither had voted in any
election, ever - perched on the edges of their tall stools, Sam
Sharkey telling a dozing Jake for the umpteenth time about his
encounter with the Great White (Terry knew the story almost as well
as Sam; without thinking, she'd catch a phrase and her mind would
run on mechanically, choosing words which would, as if by magic,
come falling out of Sam's mouth a moment later), and John and Tom
Grey playing their everlasting chess game which never seemed to
end, with Tom Wiggins offering the same hoary nuggets of wisdom to
one or the other from the sidelines without ever taking a hand
himself.
    Terry's was the first bar people came to when
returning to the center of town from the piers, but not one of the
summer people had ever stepped inside - perhaps it was just too
uninviting, with its drab, peeling paint and the faint smell of
liquor hanging about outside, hinting at an establishment which
served "rough trade". Terry had to smile at the thought. Thinking
of any of the old faithful fishermen who still came to drink her
rye as rough trade was more than funny, it was ridiculous. They
were all, in a way, relics, left-overs from a past which, perhaps,
the summer people didn't care to contemplate. But Terry had long
since stopped expecting someone from the other side of the great
divide to deign to darken her door. That was why she was so
surprised when the door did darken - she wasn't expecting anyone
else, all her regulars were already ensconced - and the sight of
the young, tanned youth wearing a pair of denim shorts and a loud
Hawaiian print shirt (like Magnum, P.I., Terry thought; she watched
a lot of television) struck her with a ludicrous sense of surprise
which could hardly have been topped if it had been Tom Selleck
himself who had walked in.
    The unexpected visitor looked a bit pale
beneath his tan, though, and Terry was, after all, a businesswoman.
She coaxed a smile onto her face.
    "Can I offer you something, sir?"
    "Brandy," he gasped. She had been right, he
needed that drink. "Make it a double."
    Sam Sharkey had been interrupted in the
middle of his story and watched the new arrival with a jaundiced
eye; Jake had roused from his Great White induced stupour and
himself warily watched the young stranger stumbling towards the
bar. Terry put a glass in front of him, and he reached for it and
poured it down his throat as if it had been water.
    "Hey, steady," said Terry, almost
involuntarily. She wasn't usually in the business of mothering her
customers, but this one seemed to cry out for it. "What seems to be
the trouble, youngling? You look like you've just seen a
ghost."
    The face that he turned to her made her
literally step back. All at once, she knew; turning, she poured
another glass of liquor and plonked it down forcefully on the
counter before him.
    "This one's on the house," she said