THE GHOST
WALK
THE GHOST WALK
‘DID YOU KNOW,’ said Oscar’s dad, looking at the secondhand guidebook, ‘there are meant to be more ghosts in York, for its size, than any other city in the world?’
Oscar wasn’t impressed. He was still fiddling with the remote control in the hotel room, trying to get the rubbish TV to work.
‘Oh, don’t tell me that,’ laughed Oscar’s mum, her head upside down between her legs in a yoga pose. ‘I won’t be able to sleep tonight.’
‘I can’t get any channels,’ said Oscar, ignoring what his parents were saying.
His dad sighed. ‘Oh, well, don’t worry. We’re going out in a minute. We can do something more interesting than watch TV.’
‘Yeah, right,’ said Oscar. ‘Interesting? In York?’
He knew he was sounding grumpy, but the trouble was he was having the worst holiday ever. If you could even call it a holiday. Holidays were normally about beaches and swimming pools and theme parks and bike rides and exotic food and hot weather. Not about going one hundred miles up the motorway to a town that was just as boring as the one they’d come from, only with worse weather and rubbish restaurants and zero friends.
And OK, so his dad couldn’t help it that he’d lost his job and now had to work from home, creating websites for people who paid even less money than the people who paid for his mum’s yoga classes. But surely even poor people could have a better holiday than this? And if it was all about money why did his mum insist that they spend all day going around gift shops? (The words ‘gift shop’ had become far scarier than the word ‘ghost’ for Oscar, because they meant Death by Boredom, and that was a particularly slow and nasty way to die.)
‘Well, this sounds interesting’, his dad went on, still sitting at the end of the hotel bed, reading the guidebook. ‘The Ghost Walk. A haunted tour of York, which takes place every evening.’
‘Ooh, I don’t know about that,’ said Oscar’s mum, who was now struggling with her yogic breathing.
‘Come on, it’ll be fun. It says everyone meets up at eight o’clock by the river, just outside the King’s Head pub.’ Then he read an extract from the guidebook. ‘Expect to be frightened out of your skin as legendary ghost-tour guide Dorian Deadwater takes you to horribly haunted graveyards, spooky inns, medical manor houses and other sites roamed by York’s most famous ghosts.’
‘Dorian Deadwater,’ scoffed Oscar. ‘That is so a made-up name.’
‘Probably,’ said his dad, laughing, ‘but it will be a bit of fun. And you never know, we might actually see a real ghost.’
‘Yeah, very likely, except for the fact that ghosts don’t actually exist,’ said Oscar, switching off the flickering TV in frustration. But then he looked at his dad’s face, and he realised he was only trying to cheer him up and take his mind off the fact that, when this holiday was over, Oscar had to start a new school. A new school which was known to have some very big and scary kids, kids who hated people who went to posh schools like Horton Boys’ School, which was where Oscar had been up until the end of last term, when his parents told him they no longer had enough money to send him there.
So Oscar tried to be a bit less grumpy. ‘No, it sounds fun, Dad.’ And now he thought about it, as he read the entry on the yellowing page of the guidebook, it did sound fun. Or, at least, more fun than spending a night in front of a broken TV.
Oscar’s mum stopped brushing her hair and went over to look at the guidebook. ‘Hold on, though,’ she said, ‘this is a very old book. It was last updated ten years ago. That tour’s probably not even going any more. Perhaps we should check at the tourist office.’
‘It says here the Ghost Walk has been going for thirty years, so I’m sure they’ve managed another ten,’ said Oscar’s dad, pointing at the page. ‘Anyway, there’s no harm in going to have a look, is there?’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘If there’s no one there we’ll just go for a wander and grab a bite to eat.’
Oscar looked at his mum and saw she was really hoping the guidebook was out of date on this matter. ‘Don’t worry, Mum, we’ll look after you.’
Their hotel was quite a long way from the River Ouse. They walked past the gigantic York Minster, which was lit at night in a way that made the whole building itself look like a ghost. They went down a scruffy-looking higgledy-piggledy street appropriately called The Shambles, which they’d been down earlier to visit more gift shops and to eat the most disgusting pizza Oscar had ever tasted. They passed another street called Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate.
This really is a weird city, thought Oscar, as his dad kept looking in the guidebook.
‘Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate is the smallest street in York, and the name means “Neither One Thing Nor the Other”, and dates back to Viking times . . .’
Before they got to the river, it started to rain heavily. But Oscar’s mum had heard the weather forecast and bought two umbrellas earlier that day at a shop next to the Minster.
‘See, gift shops come in handy sometimes.’
Oscar could tell she loved saying that.
And then they were there.
A big sign, creaking in the wind and battered by rain, had a picture of a calm, wise king, his painted face oblivious to the weather. Below his image were the words ‘The King’s Head’.
But there was no one else around.
‘See, I was right,’ said Oscar’s mum. ‘It’s finished. Oh, well, let’s go and grab a bite to eat.’
‘Hold on,’ said Oscar’s dad. ‘Look at that.’
He was pointing over to the old stone wall next to the pub. There was a painted sign on it, which was hard to read as it was weather-worn and the paint was peeling off. It said:
THE GHOST WALK
8.pm., nightly. Meeting here.
Adults £5, Under 16s £3
Join Dorian Deadwater as he takes you on a tour of the city’s restless dead.
Be afraid. . .
‘Well the price isn’t too scary,’ said Oscar’s dad, who was always worrying about money these days. ‘Either they haven’t put it up for ten years, or “Mr Deadwater” isn’t worth paying much more,’ he laughed.
‘Please, call me Dorian.’
The voice came from nowhere, or seemed to. Oscar turned round with his parents to see a man standing there, with rain falling hard into the River Ouse behind him.
‘Oops, sorry,’ said Oscar’s dad, looking rather embarrassed. ‘I didn’t see you there.’
‘My goodness,’ said Oscar’s mum, with a gasp. ‘You gave me the fright of my life.’
Oscar looked at the man and almost laughed.
Dorian Deadwater was dressed in a long Victorian tail coat. He had a grey goatee beard which was cut into a little point below his chin. If it wasn’t for his very normal-looking modern glasses and his small silver earring it would be easy to believe he had stepped out of the nineteenth century. But there was something a bit too theatrical about him to be truly scary. Indeed, Oscar thought he looked like someone out of a pantomime.
The man turned back for a moment, watching the rain land on the river.
‘There’s a ghost of a little girl called Polly Mae who sometimes appears on that river,’ he said, sounding tired before he’d even begun. ‘1652 had been a very cold winter. The Ouse had turned to ice . . . She died trying to cross. And now she sometimes calls out, asking for help. To hear her you would think she was really there, more alive than you or I. People have often believed it to be true, jumping in the Ouse to try and save her out of a simple human kindness.’
‘How sad,’ said Oscar’s mum, but Dorian Deadwater didn’t comment.
‘That’s not an official part of the tour,’ said Dorian. ‘I just thought I’d let you know. Anyway, it looks like you’re the only ones, so follow me,’ he said in a deep and quiet voice which struggled against the rain to be heard. ‘Time to show you some ghosts.’
They began to walk across the slippery cobbles, following the tour guide as he took slow and steady steps towards their first destination. Oscar’s mum held her son’s arm tightly.
‘I’m scared,’ she said, half-joking, but only half.
Oscar wasn’t scared. Not yet, anyway. But his heart was racing a little with excitement. Maybe York wasn’t going to turn out to be such a bad place, after all.
They turned the corner and saw a hill with a large, round ruined stone tower, floodlit against the night.
‘Ah, that’s Clifford’s Tower,’ said Oscar’s dad, consulting the guidebook for the 786th time that day. ‘The only part of York Castle that’s still standing, apparently . . .’
Dorian Deadwater stopped suddenly in front of them, as if at a gunshot, and turned. His eyes widened and stared straight at Oscar as he began to speak, with the tower hovering high and white above him like a giant crown. Suddenly he seemed very awake, far more alert than he’d been by the water’s edge.
‘On the sixteenth of March in the year 1190, over a hundred people died in this tower behind me,’ he said, with water dripping off his nose and eyebrows and ears. As he carried on talking, Oscar felt chilled by his words. ‘Men, women, children, who had all been hiding from an angry mob. This mob had burned down their houses to kill them just because they were Jews. Back in those days the castle was made of wood, not stone, and rather than be killed at the hands of the mob and sword-wielding knights who were coming for them, the poor Jews decided to set the castle, and so themselves, on fire. They all perished in the flames.’
‘My goodness,’ gasped Oscar’s mum.
Dorian Deadwater waited a moment. He was soaked. His eyes were still staring at Oscar. The kind of sad, lost eyes that belong at funerals.
‘Every so often at around about this time in the evening, people can still hear the screams of those poor trapped souls, burning alive . . .’
Oscar listened. He couldn’t hear anything but the softening rain and distant traffic. Neither could his parents.
The rain got heavier. Oscar’s mum offered Dorian the York Minster umbrella she was holding. He smiled, a soft sadness shining in his eyes, and took the umbrella. ‘You are kind. But don’t be too kind. It can kill you in this city. Kindness.’
They carried on walking around the old city, feeling a bit worried and confused by what Dorian was talking about. Then they came to a place called St William’s College. They walked along its pathways, as Dorian talked about how many locals never went there because of a wailing ghost. The wailing ghost was a murderer.
‘He and his brother killed and robbed a priest over five hundred years ago,’ said Dorian, who was now shivering with cold from his wet clothes. ‘And the younger brother felt guilty for their crime and wanted to confess. So the older brother went to the authorities and said his younger brother had committed the crime. The younger brother was hanged.’
‘So, it’s the younger brother who’s the ghost?’ asked Oscar.
‘No. The older brother.’ Dorian sighed with the cool sadness of a winter’s breeze. ‘Guilt creates more ghosts than anger ever can. So every night he walks these pathways, moaning . . .’
Oscar watched as Dorian pretended to see someone again, his eyes moving slowly as if to follow the ghost’s walk. ‘Can you see him? There. There in the dark.’
‘I can’t,’ said Oscar’s dad.
‘Neither can I,’ said his mum.
‘Nor me,’ said Oscar.
On the way to the next place, which Oscar hoped – out of boredom rather than fear – would be the last, he decided to ask the guide another question.
‘Is Dorian Deadwater your real name?’
The man smiled for the first time all evening. ‘No.’
‘What is it then?’
His mum tutted. ‘Oscar, don’t be cheeky.’
‘I’m just interested,’ Oscar said, knowing that if Dorian’s name was fake then everything else was likely to be fake too.
‘My real name’s Stephen. Stephen Holt.’
The laugh that Oscar had banned himself from having now broke free into the night air.
‘I know,’ said Dorian – or Stephen, rather. ‘Not very scary. That’s why I changed it.’
‘So how did you get interested in ghosts?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said solemnly. ‘It was just a job I suppose. I didn’t believe at first. Not until . . .’
‘You saw one yourself?’ asked Oscar, sensing this was part of the act.
‘Yeah, something like that.’ Then he suddenly seemed alert. ‘You see, life and death are really just two islands very far apart. And there’s a whole sea of nothingness in between. And it’s a vast sea, full of souls who aren’t dead or alive. They’re neither one thing nor another.’
This time it was Oscar’s dad who laughed. ‘Or Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate, as the Vikings would say.’ But his laugh soon died under the guide’s serious stare.
‘Yes,’ said Stephen, still looking soaked even though he had now been sheltering with the umbrella for over half an hour.
The tour kept going, and at each stop a very spooky ghost was described but never seen.
At All Saints’ Church, Oscar strained his eyes until they hurt looking for a girl his own age who had died but never had a proper burial.
‘She wanders around,’ said Stephen sadly, ‘looking for her own grave, but she can never find it because it isn’t there. She was a friend of Polly Mae – the girl on the river. They died within a week of each other.’
And even Oscar was a little creeped out when Stephen stared over to the far end of the graveyard and the yew trees that blew in the wind.
Oscar’s mum saw Stephen shivering. ‘You’re still wet. I feel guilty, you having to do this tour when there are only three of us.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Stephen said, smiling softly. ‘I enjoy it. It’s like being with friends.’
And when he said this, neither Oscar nor his parents knew if Stephen was speaking about his friends being them or the ghosts he was pretending to see. Either way it made Oscar shiver from more than just the cold.
They went to more places. To a medieval manor house where one of Henry VIII’s wives is meant to float about. To a street called Goodramgate where a man called Thomas Percy apparently walks around with his head under his arm. His head had been chopped off at the orders of Elizabeth I because he’d tried to start a rebellion.
‘I can’t see him,’ said Oscar, as the wind picked up, the cold, harsh air scrubbing against his face.
‘I can,’ said Stephen, sadly. ‘His head always whispers . . .’
Oscar shook his own head. For a moment he had been starting to believe, but this was getting silly. Yet then, just at that moment of doubt, he heard something.
‘There is a life after death.’
It was very quiet but Oscar felt cool breath next to his ear. Breath which felt different and closer than the wind. And then Stephen finished the sentence he was halfway through, ‘“. . . there is a life after death”. That’s what he says.’ And Stephen was staring straight into Oscar’s eyes, with a kind of knowing stare.
‘Dad, Mum, did you hear that?’
‘Hear what?’ they asked together.
Oscar looked around, saw no sign of a man carrying a head under his arm, and realised his old English teacher, Mrs Gooding, had been right. He really did have an over-active imagination.
‘You have been kind, keeping me company,’ said Stephen, from somewhere. ‘It gets very lonely sometimes.’
Then they heard wet footsteps, fading. They turned to see Stephen Holt walking away, his long sweeping coat disappearing out of view as he turned a corner.
‘Wait! Where are you going?’ Oscar’s dad asked, starting to run after him. ‘We haven’t settled yet. We haven’t paid you.’
Oscar and his mum jogged towards Dad, wondering why he was just standing at the corner, looking confused.
‘Dad?’
‘It’s impossible.’
Oscar was there now, so he could see it too. Or rather, not see it. It was just a long narrow street with cobbles shining from the rain. Stephen was nowhere to be seen.
‘Stephen?’ called Oscar’s dad. ‘We owe you money.’
‘And you’ve got my new umbrella,’ whispered Oscar’s mum.
But there came no reply. Just the rise and fall of a distant ambulance siren.
‘Guess it’s time to go back,’ said Oscar’s mum.
The next morning, over a hotel breakfast of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes (out of those little boxes that only seem to exist in hotels), Oscar’s dad said, ‘I feel really bad about not settling with Stephen yesterday. Perhaps he heard my joke about him not being worth paying.’
‘But the walk was pretty rubbish,’ said Oscar, ‘we didn’t see any ghosts and then he ran off.’
Of course, Oscar heard a ghost, but he had now convinced himself he’d just thought he’d heard a ghost. Which was a big difference. And, anyway, he knew how his mum and dad didn’t have very much money these days, and he didn’t want them to have to waste it on a silly walk in the dark.
‘That’s not the point,’ his dad went on, talking with his mouth full as always. ‘The point is it cost thirteen pounds last night, so we should have paid thirteen pounds. Money might not exactly grow on trees any more, but we’ve still got our principles, Oscar. That’s the main thing.’
Oscar didn’t argue.
‘We should go to the tourist office,’ his dad continued, chewing on a piece of toast and Marmite. ‘I bet they organise it.’
His mum nodded, ‘And I might be able to get my new umbrella back. It was a nice one. And not cheap. That cost almost as much as the ghost tour. In fact, I think it was the same price. How strange.’
The tourist office was bright and modern, full of lots of shiny leaflets about York Minster and the Jorvik Viking Centre and fun-looking theatre shows.
There were two members of staff behind the desk. An old, grumpy-looking man eating an apple and tapping away on his computer. And a younger, happier-looking woman who was chatting to two equally friendly looking Japanese women.
Oscar and his family waited. And at least they knew they’d come to the right place. Because there on the wall behind the desk was a large photograph of a man with a pointy little beard and glasses, with sad eyes. Underneath the photo it said: York’s Legendary Ghost Walker, Dorian Deadwater.
Five minutes later it was their turn to see the woman behind the desk.
‘Oh hello there,’ said Oscar’s dad, ‘we’re here because we need to pay for something. It’s a bit embarrassing, really, but we went on the ghost walk last night and we never paid the man his money for the tour.’
‘And he went off with my new umbrella,’ added Oscar’s mum.
The woman was looking cross or confused. ‘What tour?’
‘Sorry?’ said Oscar’s dad. ‘The ghost tour. I mean, walk. Whatever it’s called.’
Then, to make himself even clearer, he pointed at the framed poster on the wall. ‘With him. “Dorian Deadwater.” Or Stephen, rather.’
This time the woman looked perfectly blank. ‘There isn’t a ghost walk as far as I know. I’m sorry.’
‘But that’s ridiculous, of course there is. We were on it last night. With Dorian . . . I mean, Stephen . . . Stephen Holt. That was his real name. He was soaked, poor man.’
And at the sound of the name ‘Holt’, there was a sudden gasp from the other person behind the desk. The man, who had finished eating his apple.
Even though they were in the middle of a warm, bright, colourful tourist office, Oscar felt himself go colder than he’d felt at any point the night before.
‘I’m sorry,’ said the man, standing up and looking suddenly very pale, ‘I think you’ve made a mistake.’
‘But we couldn’t have,’ said Oscar’s mum, laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation. ‘Look, you advertise the ghost walk right here on your wall.’
‘That’s not an advert,’ the man said. ‘It’s a mark of remembrance.’
Oscar’s dad looked confused. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘We keep it here to remember Stephen. He died ten years ago next January. It had been a . . . The river had frozen over . . . And he’d walked out onto it, for some strange reason. No-one knows why . . . It wasn’t like Stephen. He was a very sensible person. A good person. And he loved doing the ghost walk.’ The man stared at the picture on the wall. ‘But once he died, we stopped it. No one could do it like him.’
Things from last night flooded Oscar’s brain.
The out-of-date guidebook.
The way Dorian was dripping wet, even with the umbrella, and then when the rain stopped he was unable to dry off.
Neither one thing nor another . . .
The story of Polly Mae. The girl who appeared on the river, asking to be saved. It can kill you in this city. Kindness.
‘Yes,’ the man was saying, shaking his head with an infinite sadness. ‘He would have helped anyone. He’s buried in the graveyard at All Saints.’
‘Right,’ said Oscar’s dad, his voice wavering. ‘Thank you.’
Outside the tourist office, Oscar and his parents stared at each other, speechless.
‘We should go and look,’ said Oscar, half-surprised by the courage of the words that had come from his mouth. ‘That was the graveyard we were in yesterday.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Oscar’s mum. ‘I think I’m in shock.’
‘Yes,’ said Oscar’s dad. ‘I know the feeling. But if we don’t find out the truth there’s going to be a big doubt buzzing around our heads. The kind of doubt that keeps you awake at three in the morning. Let’s get to the bottom of this.’
They found their way back to the graveyard and walked through it on the thin, withered Tarmac path, checking headstones as they went.
Then: ‘Oh my God,’ cried Oscar’s mum suddenly. ‘It can’t be.’
‘What can’t be?’ asked Oscar’s dad.
‘The umbrella.’ Oscar’s mum was looking deathly pale as she raised her hand towards a gravestone. And she was right. There, leaning against the grave, was the York Minster umbrella she had lent Stephen Holt.
‘How did that get there?’ she asked, scared of an answer.
Oscar read the inscription on the gravestone as fear crept like a shadow over him.
IN LOVING MEMORY
STEPHEN HOLT
1960–2002
Drowned on 4th January
in the River Ouse.
YOU WILL LIVE FOR EVER
IN OUR HEARTS
‘Right,’ said Oscar’s dad, his voice sounding weaker than normal. ‘Let’s, erm, take the umbrella and go home.’
And as they walked out of the graveyard, mute with shock, Oscar realised that he wouldn’t be the slightest bit scared of his new school.
‘Well,’ said his mum, eventually finding the comfort of words. ‘I think we’ll save up and go on a beach holiday next year.’
They all agreed it sounded like a very good idea.