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with all her might.
     
     
    Chapter Ten
    Arthur’s Visitor
     
    Arthur smiled to himself as he left the band of happy tourists to mill around in the dying light of the late evening sun.  They had stopped outside the Cheshire Cheese pub.  He loved running these ghost tours; it made him feel so alive .  The look on the faces of a crowd hanging on his every word was intoxicating.
    As the crowd drifted apart he found his mind drifting back to the girl who had been accompanying him on several of his recent walks.
    “Iona Ward,”he whispered to himself.
    After the last tourist had wandered off he looked left and right along the street and stroked his lightly stubbled chin.  He walked up to the door of the pub, looked up and down the street once more, and entered.
    Inside, the bar was dimly lit, and crowded with an assortment of shoppers and office workers relaxing after their busy days.  A small group of students were talking animatedly to the barman.
    Arthur stared past them, looking longingly at the pints of beer and glasses of whiskey.  It had been a long time since he had been able to drink.
    Arthur frowned and licked his lips as he pushed his way along the whole length of the bar, gazing at the variety of drinks for sale.  He made his way to a table in the corner, still covered in empty glasses from the party who had just left it.  One pint glass still contained over a centimetre of stout; Arthur leaned over it and sniffed.  He looked painfully disappointed as he slumped back into his chair.
    The students at the bar were trying loudly to coerce the barman into switching on the karaoke machine.  The barman was refusing, telling them it was too early.  He added,“If my customers hear that moron murdering any more Robbie Williams songs they might just lose the will to live.”
    Arthur was joined at his table by a man who looked around a similar age.  The stranger had very short grey hair and a bushy grey moustache.  His narrow eyes fixed on the student party.  He spoke to Arthur as he made himself comfortable on the chair next to him:“Ah dear me, what a terrible racket these young ones make.”
    “Indeed,”agreed Arthur, looking enviously at the stranger’s pint.
    “Aye, youth is wasted on the young,”the man continued, sipping his drink.
    “I was the same myself,”Arthur muttered mournfully,“I wasted my youth, and the rest of my life, come to that.”
    The stranger wanted to complain about young people, however the conversation had become too gloomy even for his dour taste:“Ah dear me, but I’m sure there’s still life in the old dog yet.”
    At this Arthur took a fit of coughing.  The stranger offered him a drink, but he waved it away, still gasping for breath between coughs.  When he had calmed down he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
    At that moment he heard a faint whisper:“ Help me! ”
    Arthur opened his eyes and looked around until he saw that a ghostly face had appeared in the almost empty beer glass in front of him.
    “Please help me!”the voice whispered again.
    Arthur knocked over the glass in surprise.  Picking it up he murmured into the now empty glass,“Let’s go somewhere more private.” Then, muttering an apology to his companion, he walked towards the gentlemen’s toilet.
    Once inside, Arthur checked that the room was empty and sighed deeply. “OK,”he spoke into space,“show yourself.”
    The air in front of him seemed to thicken, and a strange figure slowly appeared.  Its face was white and stretched lengthways, its mouth, opened in a silent scream was filled with mismatched fangs and teeth, its forehead was decorated with pins and horns and its cat-like and green eyes were full of fear and sorrow.  Despite combining so many fearful attributes, somehow the creature looked pitiful and sad.  He looked more like a young child’s drawing of a scary monster than anything that was genuinely frightening.
    As soon as his outline became semi-solid the