Jenny Greenteeth

A Ghost Story for Helen Barber’s birthday

In homage to M. R. James and in memory of all women killed for being female

“I’m fucking sick of this bollocks,” said Jonny, looking over at the screen in the corner of the pub. “I mean, this sort of thing happens, and for a few weeks all the men in the country are supposed to go round saying oh I’m so fucking sorry I’m a man. I mean, shit happens.” He turned away in disgust.

On the screen, the sound turned down, a man in police uniform was saying something serious and melancholy. The picture cut to a shrine of wrapped flowers, laid out neatly along the road where Carrie Curtice’s body had been found. Along the bottom of the screen, a rolling message ran: “POLICE ARE NOW TREATING THE INCIDENT AS MURDER. A 32-YEAR-OLD MAN HAS BEEN ARRESTED.”

“Spoils the night, an’all,” said Jonny, “can’t we just have a quiet pint after football without this bullshit?”

“’Parently it was her boyfriend,” said Sam.

“Well, then,” said Jonny, “so it couldn’t just have been anyone, like they keep on saying. Takes one to know one.”

“Fit, mind you,” said Sam. “Shame, really.” Jonny sniggered.

“Enough of that!” said a voice. Jonny turned round; it was the old man at the next table who had spoken. He was, so it appeared, one of those old men who come to pubs neither to meet friends nor strangers, but simply to sit in silence and nurse a pint. A lost soul.

“Who the fuck asked you?” said Jonny. Sam, who didn’t like trouble, said, “C’mon, Jonny,” and tried to lead him out of the bar. But Jonny stayed where he was, glaring at the old man.

It was odd, though; he’d expected some kind of reaction. Not necessarily an angry one, not from someone like that. Maybe the old man would apologise, or leave, or at the very least, look away. But he simply lifted his head and looked straight into Jonny’s eyes. His own were the bright ice-blue of a much younger man, and shone out of his gaunt and ravaged face like small side-lights in the wall of an old building at dusk.

He said, “It was Jenny Greenly that went missing. When I was a lad. She worked here. This was the parlour – you could bring girls in here; the bar was just for the men – and all the men had an eye for Jenny; she was the bonniest lass you ever saw. She used to serve me though she knew I was only seventeen – but I had a job and I lived at home, and my mam kept on feeding me, so I had the money. Things’ve changed..”

At this point, Jonny expected himself to say “Fas – cin – a – ting” in a sarcastic voice, and turn away. But for some reason, he didn’t. He was, in fact, fascinated; those ice-blue eyes seemed to be affixed to his.

“One night,” the old man went on, “a bunch of us were in here, and Jenny said “Can you see your drinks off, gents,” and we all got up. But the last one to go was this fella who they called Ted – Ted from the garage – I never knew his surname. He was a greasy little fella, his jacket always covered in muck and grease from the garage, and his hair was greasy too – well, that was the way they had it, back then. I suppose you’d call him handsome. He was forever getting close to Jenny when she came round to pick up the glasses, slapping her bum and so on, and she’d squeal and look annoyed. That was normal then..”

“Meant nothing,” said Sam, “we’re all too PC these days,” but nobody took any notice.

“So this Ted fella said to her, “Won’t you let me walk you home, Jenny?” and she said “No, no, you’ll be long gone by the time I get out,” and he said, “I’ll wait for you, darlin’” and she grinned at him – that grin that girls give to lads they know like ‘em – and she said “You’ll be waiting a long time, sunshine.”

“Then I thought, she’s flirting with him, and I thought I’d wait outside for her myself, ‘cos she was a pretty girl and if anyone was going to walk her home it was going to be me. So I stood outside until the lights went out, and I saw her come out and tie her hanky round her head. I was about to step out and say “Evening, Jenny,” but then – I bottled it. I was seventeen, and I thought she’d laugh at me. So I let her go, and she trotted off down to the tow-path – it was all quiet, I could hear her heels on the path – and then she went out of sight. There weren’t so many lights along there as there are now. But just after she went, I saw someone else, he’d been hidden against the wall in the dark, pop out and follow her. I was pretty sure it was Ted from the garage, and I thought, what’s he sneaking after her like that for? And I wondered if I should follow them – but it was late, and cold, and I thought she’d call me a Peeping Tom, and I went home. And there hasn’t been a day since then when I haven’t wished I’d stayed.

“The next day I went to work alright, and I stayed at home that night; but the next day someone had a paper, and at lunch-break he said, “Heard about this?” and turned the front to face me, and there was a picture of Jenny – though it hardly looked like her, it was all smudged and dark – and underneath it said “LOCAL GIRL MISSING’”

“So then the police came and questioned us all, and I told them what I’d seen, o’course; but all they got out of that was that I’d hung around waiting for her, and then they scared the wits out of me – trying to get me to confess. Ted must’ve said he’d gone straight home, and  – well, they couldn’t pin it on either of us, so they had to let us go. They dredged the canal, but they never found anything.”

“That’s really sad,” said Sam, “but – “. Jonny kept on staring.

“Things were different after that. Ted carried on coming in, but  – none of us were as happy as all that any more. And he was worse and worse. One night he came in – it was a filthy night outside, blowing a gale and raining – and he came in looking white, with his hat missing and the rain running down his cheeks as if he was standing under a drainpipe.

“You’re not looking great,” said Don, who was the landlord then, “what can I get you?” Ted just waved a hand towards the taps, and Don gave him a pint of mild, like he normally had – and he sat down in the corner, not speaking, looking straight ahead, and there he stayed. A few of the lads said, “What’s up, Ted? Seen a ghost?” and instead of replying he just shook his head and stayed where he was, staring into space.

“I wasn’t paying too much attention, then, but knowing what I knew, when I’d got a pint or two inside me I sat down beside him and I said, ‘What’s up, Ted? Seen Jenny out there?’ He turned – I thought he’d hit me, the look in his eyes – but he stood up, and looked around for his hat, and when he remembered he’d lost it he wrapped his coat around himself and ran out into the rain again.

“We never saw him again. Nobody reported him missing for days; he lived on his own. When people realised the garage wasn’t opening they raised the alarm, and then the police got involved, and they were back again, asking questions; but everyone said the same, that the last they’d seen of him, he’d looked terrified, and run in from the rain like he’d seen a ghost, and ran back out as though he’d seen another. “

The old man took a sip of his beer, looking down, of course, to do so. Jonny said, “Bollocks to that,” and sat back down himself. The old man made no reaction.

“Well, that was fucking weird,” said Sam.

“Yeah,” said Jonny, “mad old bastard.”

The bell rang for closing time. “I’ll see you next week,” said Jonny, put on his coat, picked up his bag, and went out. Sam, who still had an inch or so left in his glass, watched him go, perplexed.

Jonny’s route took him along a narrow footpath between the pub and the adjacent building, and then down some worn stone steps to the tow-path. Swinging his bag over his shoulder, he walked along the path, casually admiring the patterns of light cast by the street lights upon the water. It was a dry evening, but cloudy.

“What a weird evening!” he thought. “That mad old bastard. What was he on about? I’d never heard of Jenny  – Whatsername. Jenny Greenteeth, was it?”

Then one of those flashes of remembered horror flashed across his mind. When he was a child, there was a book at school called “Jenny Greenteeth.” It was a retelling of the folk-tale of the water-demon of the same name, who lurks under carpets of water-weed, ready to drown the unwary who mistake it for solid ground and step upon it. “What was that rhyme?” Jonny thought, without, truthfully, wanting to remember it at all. But it came to him as though he had recited it every day since his childhood.

“When through the weeds the children slip

They feel her claws around them grip

She drags them down into the deep

To realms of everlasting sleep.”

The rhyme, he remembered, had been illustrated with the most terrifying picture of a sharp-nosed, sharp-toothed creature, all sinewy limbs and grasping claws, her naked body the slimy green of the canal walls and her deep-set eyes a hot, dark red, and her face contorted into a grimace of the utmost malevolence…

Suddenly, all the lights went out. Not just the lights alongside the canal, but all the lights in the city; there must have been a power cut. There was no moon, and the tow-path was down in a cutting with the canal, almost hidden from the rest of the town. By the urban glow of car headlights on the roads, Jonny could just about see the path below his feet, and he kept on walking; but he felt an appalling sense of dread and foreboding, and all he could think about was that contorted, malevolent face with the red eyes and the sharp teeth.. He carried on walking.

As he did so, he realised that the fog was descending. It had seemed clear when he left the pub, but now he seemed to be walking through heavy, damp clouds, which beaded his face and hands, and made his clothes cling damply to his body. The cold struck through him, so that he had to set his teeth so as not to shiver. He could barely see a foot in front of him.

The fog before him swirled; sometimes he thought he could just about see through it; sometimes he was entirely blind. The thought of slipping into the canal horrified him, and he reached out a hand to steady himself against the wall on the other side of the path. His hands touched soft, cold, damp vegetation, clinging to the stone, and he shied away as if he had been burnt. It occurred to him that he had no idea whether he had reached his turn-off from the tow-path.

Then it seemed to him that the fog was taking shape in front of him; first he discerned a dark, solid body in the midst of it, which continued before him as he went, and seemed to sway slightly, as a human being does when walking. At the same time, he fancied he heard a high twittering noise, at first very soft, so that he couldn’t be sure whether he had heard anything at all; and then slightly louder. It was like many voices all speaking together, with something of the timbre of young women chattering, and something of the calls of starlings in a murmuration, but thinner and nastier than either of them.

He carried on walking. The form seemed to have a head and a body now, and though he could hardly make out its legs, it walked in front of him with the supple gait of a young woman. Another noise entered the mix: the clip-clip-clip of a pair of heels upon the cobbled path. Now the shape seemed to be wearing a raincoat, belted around the waist, and what looked like a headscarf.

Jonny stopped; it stopped. He took another step; it stepped forward also. He stopped again – and looked behind him.

There was a rush of damp, cold air, and the twittering sound grew wilder and louder, and Jonny could see nothing apart from the dark swirls of fog. He turned to face the way he was going again; and the being, whatever she was, turned round to face him. Her eyes were like two coals burning in her face, and her outstretched hands, which he had hardly been able to discern before, were skeletal and black, and the twittering sounds took shape as well, and became a fierce, triumphant, sadistic cackle of delight.

Jonny screamed. He turned as if to run away; but his foot slipped on the damp and slimy cobbles, and with a feeling of absolute horror he felt himself falling towards the canal, and the freezing water closing over his body and his head. His legs, flailing in the water, caught against something grasping and strong; he was absolutely blinded by the dark and the filthy water; and his lungs were bursting and his mouth locked shut …

And then, all at once, two things happened. His head broke the surface of the water; and the lights came back on.

Jonny found himself standing in no more than five feet of water. His head and shoulders were clear of the surface. Wading to the side, he felt his way impeded by something clinging to his leg – it was hard and unyielding, and appeared to be caught around it  – a piece of chicken-wire, he thought.

Reaching the side, he hauled himself out of the canal, panting with relief and shock. He turned his attention to his leg.

Under the harsh and unreal light of the street lamp the form of what was clinging to his leg was not at first quite clear. He thought it might be a branch broken off short, or a loose bundle of twigs. But these twigs were curved and flattened, and radiated away from a central twig shaped like a spatula. Jenny Greenteeth had led him to her grave, and left him with his foot where her heart used to be.