Chapter 25: Twenty-Five - A London Haunting: A Christmas Ghost Story

Not just one car involved in the crash. Two.

Two families.

And Reggie, the lone survivor.

“Two families,” Reggie said. “And I was the cause of it. Me. Me! Because I was tired. Because I was too scared to say I was tired, that we shouldn’t be driving in such bad weather, that I didn’t want to continue. I fell asleep. And because of that, two families died – mine and another. Someone else’s child as well as my own.”

Aside from Reggie’s voice, there was silence still, though a tentative one, as if something waited at the edge of it. Further upheaval?

“Reggie…” Lottie began, but he was already shaking his head.

“My fault. All mine. None of us should have been on the road that day, but…but…”

“But it was Christmas,” Cam said, having released them both, just as Lottie had released Reggie. “Because there’s just too much…expectation at Christmas.”

At his words, Lottie looked up at him, at the anguish and sadness on his face.

She’d been witness to what had happened that long-ago night, back in the sixties – further back than the newspapers she’d searched. But a crash that catastrophic, on that day, at that time – four forty-five, in the early evening gloom she knew now, not the small hours of the morning – must have been reported somewhere. She’d find it in the new year, she was resolved to. But for now, Reggie was still speaking, and the curtains behind her were rustling – a rattle at the windowpane, though slight.

“You can see…you can see why she haunts me, can’t you? Why I…deserve to be haunted? To be punished. Every day that I live and they don’t. You can understand now. Oh God, I should have perished too in the crash! I should have––”

A door made its frame shudder downstairs.

It was Cam who took hold of Reggie now.

“You didn’t fall asleep,” he said.

His words seemed to pull Reggie from the abyss he was falling into again.

“What?” he said, just as Lottie turned to Cam.

“What do you mean, he didn’t fall asleep?” she asked.

Cam glanced at her. “Did you see him in those visions of yours? Reggie at the wheel – falling asleep? Did you actually see it, Lottie?”

Mercifully, no. She might have heard the crash in all its terrible glory, but there’d still been a degree of distance – a barrier Reggie’s mind still kept in place for protection. She hadn’t seen it because he wouldn’t let her. Wouldn’t let himself.

But Cam…what had he seen?

His Aunt Dot was psychic, but she wasn’t his aunt by blood. He was wholly accepting of psychic ability, though, having grown up around it. Could that alone make a difference? Strengthen his sixth sense, especially now, when it was needed?

It was another interesting theory.

She hadn’t seen Reggie at the wheel, and she said so. “Why, Cam? What is it?”

“You know I said I woke this morning feeling…” He nodded towards Reggie.

Lottie nodded, too. He’d been feeling guilty, heavy as lead inside him.

“Cam, what is it you saw?”

She remembered then – he’d had something else to tell her. Something he hadn’t been able to say when they’d first entered Reggie’s, because the whimpering had distracted them.

Cam took a breath. “When I was asleep, someone kept telling me to ‘wake up, wake up’. I don’t know – I thought it must be my mum. There was, like, this real urgency to it. But then…whoever it was shouted, the moment I did wake.”

Lottie could barely breathe. “And?”

“And they said, ‘You weren’t asleep.’ Weird, just so––”

On an exhale that came out like a whoosh, Lottie turned back to Reggie and gripped his arms again. “Rewind, Reggie. Rewind.”

“But––”

“Listen to me! Rewind.”

And if he wouldn’t – if he refused – she’d do it for him.

She screwed her eyes shut, returning to the scene of the incident. The moment just before impact. The car hurtling through the snow, Rebecca in the passenger seat. Reggie struggling to keep control. Another car on the opposite side of the road – not close. Not yet. Still a little way off.

Reggie was speaking to Rebecca. Lottie could see his mouth forming words.

“We have to pull over.”

“No,” Rebecca said. “Keep driving.”

“But, Becca, why? What’s this all about? We can’t keep driving – it’s getting too bad. We have to pull in, stay safe. That’s all I want, Becca, to keep you safe.”

“Drive!”

“Becca, what is it you’re trying to do here exactly? Outrun Christmas? Just tell me – so I can understand.”

His love. His life. His soulmate.

Whatever had happened between them, she’d been that once, and perhaps could be again. Miracles did happen. Especially at Christmas. That’s what everyone said, the message drummed home year after year.

“Becca, please––”

Becca reached across, not to explain, but to strike.

Her fists slammed into his side. She pulled at his hair, beat him, screaming all the while. “Keep driving. Just keep fucking driving. I hate Christmas.”

It was only natural that Reggie should try to defend himself – to raise his arms, to protect his head. In doing so, his hands left the wheel, of course. And the car – already hard enough to control in the storm – veered into the oncoming lane.

The other car – battling through just as they were, determined to be somewhere, expected – came closer.

Closer still.

Lottie saw it all unfold, and this time it was crystal clear.

“You didn’t fall asleep, Reggie!” she breathed. “Cam’s right.” He or whoever had sent the dream his way. “So why did you––”

She stopped mid-sentence, a line from a book flashing through her mind, one she’d read only recently, that she’d fallen in love with.

It is a far, far better thing that I do…

When the ambulance came, when the police did, when Reggie’s family questioned him, and Rebecca’s family, his colleagues, everyone who knew him – that was the story he’d told them: that he’d fallen asleep at the wheel.

Lottie’s understanding deepened.

“You didn’t lie because you were ashamed of her beating you, Reggie,” she said. “Not that time. You said it because it was the last thing you could do for her, to stop people thinking badly of her. So you took the blame instead. Every bit of it.”

An act, in its own way, as noble as any Sydney Carton had ever undertaken.

Reggie Lord of No.142 Long Mere Road – an ordinary man who lived on an ordinary street – like Sydney, had gone to the gallows for love, even if those gallows were metaphorical. Severed himself from life while protecting her with everything he had left, telling his version of the story so many times he’d come to believe it.

“The crash, the deaths, weren’t your fault, Reggie.” Lottie looked him straight in the eye as she spoke, the silence still unsettled around her. “None of it was. It was just something that happened, something unfortunate, just as fortunate things happen too. And in a way, it wasn’t Rebecca’s fault either. Not if she was ill. But wherever she is, know this: she’s at peace.”

“How?” Reggie croaked. “How can she be if she’s here? If she’s doing this?”

“I’ve told you, she isn’t here. It’s you doing this, Reggie, just you. The only person who continues to punish you…is yourself.”

The silence shifted again. It could go either way at her words.

Lottie waited.

Cam waited.

Reggie gripped the armrests of his chair, as he so often did, his knuckles white with the effort, as they so often were, his teeth gritted.

All eyes were on him.

“It’s me?” he said at last, his voice small, but there was something else in it too. The beginnings of acceptance? A long road, perhaps, but at least now he was on it.

Lottie nodded. “It was never Rebecca. Rebecca, your baby, all the victims of the crash – they’re at peace. No one ever came back to haunt you because of it. And do you know why, Reggie? Because you didn’t deserve it. That’s why.” She hesitated only briefly before adding, “That Christmas tree in the living room?”

Reggie nodded now, tears spilling from his eyes.

“We’re going down there,” Lottie said, “you, me, and Cam.”

“Down there? But…why?”

“We’re going to take it down.”

Reggie swallowed. “Take it down? At Christmas?”

“Yes. Sometimes – just sometimes – we don’t need the reminder.”