Page 86 of Hot Ghost Summer

“Oh, Brigid, you clever girl!” Jayne commends, reaching work-hardened hands deep into her apron pocket to produce fistfuls of fruit snacks. “Are these your new friends? Is this why you went a different way? Could you sense them out there?”

She barely lifts her gaze from the spectral cows that jostle and bump each other in order to be next in line for a try at eating the apple slices, or at having their first head scritches in thirty years.

“I owe you an apology, Theo.” She chuckles as she turns in a disbelieving circle. “When you said you were going to be working as a ghost detective, I thought it was either code for something—some young, hip euphemism—or that it was for an entertainment company. You know, like for children’s parties? But I never in a million years imagined…”

Her words trail off as she gets lost in the maddening crowd of affection-starved heifers.

“Your friends are so beautiful, Brigid. Oh, and okay, yes. Heavens. Hungry too. Can you eat the grass? There probably isn’t much to spare between you all, and it’s been such a hot summer that I’m afraid most of it has dried up, but you’re very welcome to what’s left.”

Regardless of my will, my body strides away from Jayne, who’s now at the epicentre of a deceased dairy cow mob, and closer to the barn.

Alvin, Simon, and Theodore, are already tucked safely away in their little overnight shelter that butts up to the back wall of the Old Dairy, but the moment the metal gate grinds open over the cobbles, all three sets of wide-spaced golden eyes track my every move. Alvin stops chewing the straw that protrudes from between his lips, Simon tilts his head so that his good horn is closer to the ground, and Theodore snorts a puff of hot breath.

Stamping his front hoof on the ground, he tenses his neck. Primed. He can get through that flimsy chicken-wire shed door when he wants to. But my body doesn’t react as if Theodore is even there.

Aiming directly for the sliding barn door beside them, the exact opposite of what I would do if I were in control, my arm drags it open along its tracks just enough that I can pass into the darkness of the unlit dairy beyond.

Once inside, I abruptly halt, as if my body doesn’t recognise where to go next, and I seize the opportunity. Concentrating so hard that pain blooms at my temples, I force my right foot forward of my own volition. Victory!

Focusing, I try again. This time, my left foot steps forward to join the right. Wading as if through knee-deep mud, I steer myself through the barn and into the visitor’s centre. With each step, the divide between my mind and my physicality eases, as if they’re both finally in agreement that this is the direction we want to walk.

The lights are still off in here, and with only the soft bluish haze of the moon filtering through the large glass doors and high windows above Jayne’s desk, I catch my reflection in the Perspex screen that covers the history board.

Horror seizes my heart.

Not because somehow my cap is now set with the visor forward, but because the same eyes I’ve stared at in the mirror every day of my life aren’t the only ones that stare back now.

I’m not alone in this body.

It’s as if I’m made of two people, one layered over the top of the other. I stare harder, scrutinising myself, as another, much paler eye drifts over the photographs trapped behind the plastic screen. One eye, because the other is missing, along with the upper jaw, cheek, and ear on the left side.

I’m possessed by the ghost of Mr Bowen, cow murderer.

“Um, Jim,” I begin, but it’s as if mothballs live in my cheeks… cheek?

I finish the sentence in my mind.

“You’re in my body.”

Mr Bowen doesn’t respond. He’s too preoccupied with the montage of pictures laid out before him. Which is extra awkward, given that I’m doing everything I can to not look, because when I do, all I can see is the exposed half of his face, and it’s…

I retch.

The movement jerks my head, and Mr Bowen’s gaze hooks onto the large corporate logo of Clawson & Stoker that’s stamped over the map of what used to be his land. Then his eye rakes over the series of photographs that show the rapid urbanisation and industrial development of recent years.

Invasive flashes of distorted images pump into my mind: a man pointing to a map of Bowen’s land, and a sales contract for a shade under one million pounds. These are Jim’s memories, I realise.

That was a lot of money back then, but it’s nothing compared to what I know this is worth now.

More memories follow: of his herd, of the dairy, and of the declaration of its listed status, and of a “sale declined” stamp due to green belt protections. Then there’s a rapid firing of more images. Traumatic ones that I try desperately to scrub from my mind because I already know what they are. I lived what came next vicariously through the newspaper articles and home camcorder footage I discovered online, and I don’t want to experience it all again.

“Sto-kerrr,” Jim growls through my mouth.

The Old Dairy was already listed, and as an active dairy on protected land, he couldn’t sell. But Mr Stoker approached him in private to suggest that if there was no herd, then perhaps that status would change, and the sale could go through.

From the way my fists clench and my heart pounds, from how my head thumps and the hairs on my neck rise, I guess the answer was “no.”

My body turns towards the glass exit door, and in an uncoordinated move, Mr Bowen walks us out of the visitor’s centre and onto the short path that puts us on the high street.