Doors, where my heart was used to beat

Rory waited by the bench in the darkness. It had been six days now since he had first seen the girl, and he hadn't seen any trace of her in that time, though he'd watched the bench from the shadows for the whole week. He was starting to doubt whether he had even seen her the first time. But that was ridiculous. It had definitely happened! He had a vivid imagination, as his mum said – Ethan and Benny often muttered something quite different – but there was no way that he could have invented that whole conversation.

But if it had been real, why hadn't she come back?

He sighed. Maybe he was just being silly. Erica would have said so. Ethan and Benny would have said so. Sarah would have tried to say something positive, but she would, eventually, agree with the others. Why was it so important to him to meet this girl again? It wasn't as if he was lonely. He always had his friends nearby, and they were always pleased to see him. Well, maybe not at three in the morning, but…

He really should remember that Ethan and Benny weren't vampires. It would be so much more convenient if they were. He had no idea why anyone wouldn't want to be one. In fact, he didn't know why people were scared of vampires – if they bit you, you got to live forever! And fly! And eat rats! OK, there were some vampires that went too far and killed people, but, you know, there were people like that, too. Bad vampires weren't evil because they were vampires; they were evil because they had been bad people, surely? If, say, Ethan was to become a vampire, he wouldn't suddenly flip out and go all evil.

So why didn't he just bite them? They would thank him in the long run. Probably. And it would be a very long run. Think of all the fun they could have, twenty-four hours a day. It would certainly stop him waiting by a bench all night for a week looking out for some no-show ghost. He put his head to one side and sat down heavily on the bench. He thought about Sarah. About how she had been desperate not to be a vampire. About her fears for the future – her endless future. She hadn't wanted to be immortal. Maybe Ethan and Benny didn't either. It would be wrong of him to enforce that on them if they didn't want to. Imagine if either of them fell in love with a human. He was fine, because he loved Erica, and they were obviously meant to be together forever, but Benny and Ethan might not be so lucky. It had been awkward enough when Ethan and Sarah had been close to going out, though, again, Rory wondered if it would have been easier if Sarah had just bitten Ethan and had done with it. He still wondered why he'd turned her down. Had that been the reason? She would never age? Well, that should have been easily solved, he reckoned.

He sighed again. Maybe he wasn't the only one that was being silly. He glanced around cursorily, in the vain hope that the ghost would have returned. He looked dully back in front of him. He frowned. Wait…

He twisted his head to the right. She waved, one eyebrow raised. "Penny for your thoughts?"

"Oh!" Rory gasped, and jumped backwards, quite like she had done on discovering that he was a vampire. Unfortunately, being rather solid, he just smacked into the stone back of the bench and remained roughly where he was, his mouth hanging open, slack. "Uh…"

She waited patiently.

"But you weren't there a minute ago! And I've been watching this bench for hours…"

"I'm a ghost. We appear and disappear on a whim. You get pretty good at sneaking up on people." She blushed, or, at least, her face went a darker grey. "It's quite good fun scaring people like that." She looked thoughtful. "I suppose that that's the central role of a ghost… Anyway, vampire boy, what were you thinking about? You certainly had a really weird expression on your face."

Rory shook his head after a long pause. "I'd rather not, if you don't mind… It would just be a bit – uh – hard to understand."

She shrugged. "OK. It really looked like it was bothering you, but … OK."

There was another pause. Then Rory looked across at her. "Have you been here every night?"

She frowned at him. "No. Have you?"

He nodded. "I've been waiting for you to come back."

She threw her hand to her mouth in shock. "You've been waiting the whole week for me? I'm so sorry! I've been haunting other places."

Rory looked down at his shoes. "Well, uh, I guess I should have known that you wouldn't stay in the same place every night. But, I suppose, I could have still gone to them in the wrong order."

She nodded in agreement, and then looked over at him curiously. "Why were you looking for me?"

He shrugged. "I was just really curious about you. I've never met a ghost before." He corrected himself: "Well, not one that I could talk to and wasn't trying to decapitate me…"

She raised an eyebrow. "That happens a lot?"

He looked at her disbelievingly. "This is Whitechapel. Where have you been for the last year and a half?"

"Dead."

Rory pulled a face. "Yeah… But you must have noticed the ramp up of supernatural stuff lately? You're part of it, surely?"

She shook her head. "Not really. I'm a ghost – I live on the edge of all worlds, natural and supernatural. I don't really pay attention to things much." She frowned. "But, recently, if anything, I'd say that there has been a decrease in supernatural energy recently. Ever since New Year. Apart from a strange reality bump a month or so ago. As a ghost, I really noticed that."

Rory looked down at the ground again. "Er…"

She laughed, incredulous. "Did you have something to do with that?"

"Well, not exactly…" He bit his lip. He put his hands up defensively. "It wasn't strictly me that did it!"

She smiled, and thought again. "No, apart from that I've not seen anything odd, except, maybe, for this boy with strange hair."

Rory's head flicked around. "Really? Like what?"

"Like two different colours. He comes here every now and again, looks confused, and then wanders off." She narrowed her eyes at him. "You again?"

Rory tipped his head from side to side. "Again, not actually me, but…" he trailed off, and looked away.

Grinning, the girl flicked her hair back. "Are you sure it's Whitechapel that's weird, or just you?"

Rory looked sheepish. "There might be some truth in that… Maybe I just attract awesomeness!" He beamed at her. She rolled her eyes. "Anyway – what's your name?"

"Cathy."

"Rory." He held out a hand politely, and then realised his mistake. Very deliberately and sarcastically, she waved her hand through his.

"Nice to meet you, Rory."

He massaged his fingers. "That felt really weird." He winced. "So, how did you become a ghost?"

Cathy looked off into the distance. "When I died – I – I separated off from my body. I don't know how. Maybe it was the shock of it. All I know is that when they pulled my body out of the water, they didn't pull me out with it. I floated around for a bit, staring into the murky water, not really believing that I was dead. After a while, though, I got used to it. I learnt how to move around. I learnt the rules of being a ghost. You can't come out during the day. You can't go too far from where you died, or you just spring back. It's like I'm on a gigantic ethereal bungee." She looked over at him. "How did you become a vampire?"

"As you might expect, someone bit me. I really like it, though. It's amazing!" He stared hard at Cathy, an earnest expression on his face. "Do you like being a ghost?"

She shook her head slowly. "No. It's so very lonely. I was sixteen when I died. I had friends, I went to parties, I had fun! Now I mooch around park benches in the middle of the night."

"To be honest, quite a lot of teenagers do that anyway," put in Rory.

She shrugged. "They grow out of it. I never will." Her normally cheerful face fell. "I know I can't go back. I'm dead, and I have to accept that. But I just wish that I could be gone as well. What is it that I want? I want to die – properly."

Crestfallen, Rory looked at her sympathetically. "Is there any way to do that?"

"I don't know," she said, sadly. "I've never met anyone who thinks that it is."

Rory suddenly brightened. Here was something he could do. "Well, you have now!" he declared.

Cathy stared at him. "What?"

"I'm going to find a way to stop you being a ghost. Cathy – I am going to kill you, and kill you properly!"