Maureen Johnson - The Name of the Star

Stephen stopped in front of one of the doors and opened it by entering a code into a number pad. The building was small and quiet, with a very modern but plain entryway and a stairwell that smelled strongly of new carpet and paint. A series of lights came on automatically as we went up the steps to the third floor, where there was just one door. I could hear a television on inside—some kind of sports coverage. Cheering.

“Callum’s home,” Boo said.

Stephen made an affirmative sound and opened the door. The room we walked into felt large, considering the smallness of the street. It was sparsely furnished with two old sofas, a few lamps, and a battered table covered in papers and files and mugs. Everything looked like the cast-off pieces from someone’s grandmother’s house—one floral sofa, one brown. Floral mugs. The rest was IKEA or cheaper. I could tell that the place itself—its size, its newness, its careful maintenance—was well above the price range of its occupants.

The occupant was sitting on one of the sofas, watching a soccer game on television. I saw the back of a head, with black, closely cropped hair, then a heavily muscled arm with a tattoo of some kind of creature holding a stick. The owner of the hair and arm raised himself up from a slouched position to peer over the sofa. It was a guy, one in a tight polo-neck shirt that stretched across his chest. He was probably about my age. It also appeared he knew exactly who I was, because he said, “What’s she doing here?”

“Change of plan,” Stephen said, tearing off his coat and throwing it over a chair.

“Kind of a major change of plan, wouldn’t you say?”

“Turn the television off, will you? This is Callum. Callum, this is Rory.”

“Why is she here?” Callum said again.

“Callum!” Boo said. “Be nice! She just found out about you know what .”

Callum held his bag of food out to me. “Do you want a chip?” he asked. When I shook my head, he dug in and retrieved a burger.

“Are you going to eat that now?” Stephen asked.

“I was eating when you came in! Besides, it’s not going to help her, letting my food get cold. What are you going to do now, exactly?”

“We’re going to explain,” Stephen said.

“Well, this should be interesting.”

“It wasn’t my decision,” Stephen said.

“She needs to know,” Boo cut in.

Their conversation spun around me. I didn’t even try to follow it. Callum switched off the television, and I was planted on one of the sofas. Boo sat with Callum, and Stephen got a kitchen chair and sat directly in front of me.

“What I’m about to tell you is going to be a little hard to accept at first,” he began.

I giggled. I didn’t mean to. Stephen looked over his shoulder at the others. Boo nodded to me encouragingly. Stephen turned back and took a deep breath.

“Have you recently had a brush with death?” he asked.

“They should really include that question in job interviews,” Callum said.

Boo elbowed him hard, and he shut up.

“Think,” Stephen said. “Have you? Has anything happened to you?”

“I choked,” I said after a pause. “A few weeks ago. At dinner.”

“Since that incident, you’ve been seeing people . . . people that other people don’t see. Am I correct?”

I didn’t need to answer. They already knew.

“What’s happening to you is a rare but far from unknown condition,” he said.

“Condition? Like a disease?”

“Not a disease . . . more of an ability. It won’t hurt you in any way.”

Callum was about to interject again, but Boo reached over and punched the underside of his bag of fries.

“Shut it,” she said.

“I didn’t!”

“You were about to.”

“Both of you,” Stephen said, more seriously this time. “Stop. This isn’t easy for her. Remember how it felt.”

Callum and Boo stopped tittering and tried to look composed.

“What you’re seeing—”

“Who,” Boo cut in again. “Who she’s seeing.”

“ Who you’re seeing . . . those people are real. But they’re dead.”

Dead people you could see. That meant ghosts. He was saying I saw ghosts.

“Ghosts?” I said.

“Ghosts,” he repeated. “That’s the usual term.”

“I know lots of people who say they can see ghosts,” I said. “They’re all crazy.”

“ Most people who claim to be able to see ghosts can’t. Most of the people who claim they have seen ghosts simply have very overactive imaginations or are easily suggestible. But some people can, and we are some of those people.”

“I don’t want to see ghosts,” I said.

“It’s brilliant,” Boo said. “Really. The woman you saw on the street. She’s dead. She’s a ghost. But she’s not scary. She’s lovely. She’s a good friend of mine. She died in the war. She’s so amazing. Her name is Jo.”

“What I’m saying is,” Stephen continued, “the ability is rare, but it’s nothing to be concerned about.”

“Ghosts?” I said again.

“This is going well,” said Callum, shoving a handful of fries into his mouth. “I wish you’d done it this way with me.”

“Let me explain,” Stephen said, adjusting his chair a little to back up an inch or so. “The ability to do what we can do . . . it’s not understood very well, but we do know a few things. Two elements need to be in place. One, you have to have the underlying ability. Possibly it’s genetic, but it doesn’t appear to run in families. Two, you have to come very close to death during your adolescence. This part is key. No one develops the ability after eighteen or nineteen. You have to—”

“Almost die,” Callum said. “We all almost died. We all had the trait. Now we all have the sight.”

They gave me a few moments to process this information. I got up and went to the window. There wasn’t much of a view. I could see the brown brick of the building a few feet away, and a pigeon roost on top of the opposite roof.

“I can see ghosts because I choked?” I finally said.

“Correct,” Stephen replied. “Basically. Yes.”

“But I’m not supposed to be worried about it?”

“Correct.”

“So . . . if I’m not supposed to be worried about it, why am I sitting here with you? You said you were police. What kind of police? Why did the police come to tell me I could see ghosts ? How can you even be police? You’re, like, my age.”

“No age requirements in our line of work,” Callum said. “The younger the better, really.”

“This is where it gets a little more complicated,” Stephen said. “We didn’t come to tell you that you can see ghosts. We happened to be working, and this happened to you today, and Boo thought you needed an explanation.”

“Working on what?” I said. “What are you doing?”

“We’re assisting with the investigation. You’re a witness. It’s standard procedure to watch over a witness.”

Finally, I did the math. I was a witness. I could see ghosts. I had seen someone on the night of a Ripper murder, someone Jazza couldn’t see, even though he was right in front of her. Someone whom no camera could film. Someone who left no DNA. Someone who walked away without a trace . . .

I had the not entirely unpleasant sensation of falling. Falling, falling, falling . . .

The Ripper was a ghost. I had seen the Ripper. The ghost Ripper.

“I think she’s figured it out,” Callum said.

“What the hell do you do?” I asked. “If he’s a . . .”

“Ghost,” Boo said.

“Then what do you do? You can’t stop him. You can’t catch him. He knows I saw him. He knows where I live.”

“You need to trust us,” Stephen said, holding up his hands. “You’re actually the safest person in London right now. You need to go on with your life completely as normal.”