Free The Man in Black: A Ghost Story by Jordan Mason Page B

to inherit from them, but that was all there was. I brought whatever I could with me in the van, the one I’d hired from James O’Neil to drive down to Stoney Grange in. James did it for nothing, and he even offered me some money to bide me over and get me through the first month or two. I didn’t take it. James was a friend of the family, and my dad always taught me not to be a charity unto myself. I had to make my own way.
    I think he was trying to tell me not to be like my mam, and that I couldn’t disagree with.
    I’d accepted my life on the Rotten Row, and that was all that I could do. Winters were colder there, and summers were brown and disheveled and lacking in nature. But even between all of that, beyond the poverty and the worry, nothing had prepared me for the haunting that was to follow.

THE DOG

    If the horror had a beginning, then it began on the second weekend I moved in. It was Sunday, and the snow had fallen harder than usual. Outside, the morning sky was black and the smell of cooking was strong. Before then, I’d never seen the elderly couple who lived above me. I assumed they were of old age because of how quiet they’d been. I first saw them in the yard together, shoveling a pathway in the snow. They both had hair of the purest silver and wore matching brown cardigans. I decided to help. I put on my coat and my boots and pulled a scarf tight around my neck, grabbing a dustpan on the way out of the back door.
    The snow had made its way into the alleyway already. I scraped through the thick of it with the toe of my boot and met the back of the old couple outside. The sky was pregnant with more snowfall, and so I decided to cough up first, not missing an opportunity to get my greetings firmly over and done with.
    The old man turned around first.
    “Wey look at you, ‘ere,” he said, a smile on his face. “The young lass from upstairs, is it? You do look lovely.”
    “Alright there?” I asked, nervously.
    “Aye, aye.”
    The old woman next to him turned around a little slower, as if it took her longer to process. She smiled all the same.
    “Eee, howa’ you, pet?”
    “Not bad, thanks. I thought you needed a hand so I - ”
    “These old hands canny’ do a lot these days, sweetheart. Come ‘ere and give us a hand,” the man said.
    I started to shovel and heap up the snow with the dustpan. A cold sweat poured.
    “Hopefully we don’t get anymore, ey?” I said, breathless.
    “Wey, hopefully not. What’s your name?” the old man asked.
    “Anne,” I replied. “Anne Davies.”
    “Name’s John, and this is Violet,” he said, nodding to his wife.
    “You’re not from ‘round ‘ere are you? Far too well off for that,” John said. “Out from Durham, aye?”
    “Aye, but I’m not all that; I still call mam, mam, and I live ‘ere, so it’s not all good. Shouldn’t complain, though.”
    “Nar, shouldn’t complain,” he grunted.
    Violet stopped shoveling and threw down her spade.
    “Eee, the dog,” she said. “I’ll go get ‘is food out the pan.”
    She wandered off up the steps to the door above mine. There was no rail to hold onto, and so she grabbed the brickwork with her hands and made the best of it. Her hands looked cold; thin and bony, like tissue paper. They reminded me of my dad. how his hands had softened as he grew more tired and weary with illness.
    “She’s just off to get the bowl an’ the food for the old’un who comes,” John said, growing more and more tired of breath. “We do our best to keep the yard clear for ‘im.”
    “You have a dog?”
    “Nar, but one does come ‘ere.”
    “What’s its name?”
    “Don’t ‘av one, but you’re welcome to name ‘im.”
    I thought about Red, how his final moments had been ones of both catharsis as well as of fear. It took him a while to die, apparently. The gunshot wound hit deep, and I still remember seeing his bloodied white coat after his passing, his eyes tightly shut and his fur stinking. We buried