by Graham West
Panic rose inside. “It’s a hell of a lot of work, Dad.”
There was a stunned silence before his father replied. “And the village isn’t?”
“I know, but can’t we just do one thing at a time?”
“What? I don’t understand what your problem is. I thought you’d be champing at the bit to get into that forest.”
“I am, but—”
“Like I said, son,” his father interrupted, sounding exasperated, “we’ve got a lot more people to keep entertained. If you don’t want to develop the woodland, I’m putting the village project on hold. It’s as simple as that.”
The phone went dead. Blakely’s old man had a quick temper, and he understood why he’d been frustrated by the reluctance to start work on Mosswood. Only three months ago, they’d opened an army-style assault course with ropes and zip wires. The kids could sign up for The Mosswood Action Course where they’d learn how to build shelters from branches and leaves before being split into teams for a series of games. Blakely had overseen the building of a large, rustic, circular structure with a thatched roof where the kids ended their adventure sitting around a small fire in the centre enjoying toasted marshmallows and chestnuts as one of his Rangers delivered a talk about survival in the wild.
His father had loved the idea and so had the investors. They had talked about extending the whole adventure experience by adding paintball, although that was going to be for the older teens. Now, everything had changed, and Blakely wasn’t quite sure how he was going to deal with the problem. At some point, his father would storm in and take control, and if the retired councillor was right, he’d be stirring up a hornet’s nest. It was at times like this Blakely wished it was all happening the other side of a TV screen on one of those ghost-hunting programmes he loved to watch.
***
Cody wondered if he was invisible. The other kids at the soft-play centre ran around him as if he wasn’t there. Maybe he’d died and no one had told him. After all, what did it feel like to be a ghost anyway? But then he spotted Bailey sitting at a table with her mother and drinking a banana milkshake; he wondered if maybe he should try to make friends again. She might be weird, but as long as she stopped swearing and calling him names, it was worth another try.
Bailey seemed pleased to see him as he ran over, ignoring his parents who were sitting close by with their drinks. “Hi, Cody! You wanna try some of this?” She pushed the milkshake at him. “It’s awesome!”
Cody couldn’t resist. He sucked long and hard through the straw as Bailey watched her drink draining like bathwater down a plug hole. “Hey! Save me some!”
“Tell you what,” her mother said. “How about you let Cody have that and I’ll buy you a fresh one?”
That seemed to satisfy Bailey, who was getting a little extra banana-flavoured milk as a reward for her generosity.
Cody pulled out a seat just as his parents appeared behind him.
“Sorry, Nicky. We didn’t see you there.”
Cody felt happier now everyone was friends again. He wondered if his mum really liked Bailey’s mum because she was quite pretty and Dad liked pretty ladies. He caught him looking at them sometimes but never said anything. He knew some dads got themselves a girlfriend occasionally and the mums got upset about it. He guessed they were jealous just like the kids at school got jealous when their best friend started hanging around with someone else.
Nicky was dad’s girlfriend but Mum didn’t seem to mind too much because they had gone up to the counter to get food together. Bailey’s mum was whispering something to Dad and looked as if she was going to cry. Cody drew another mouthful of liquid through the straw. It was cold and thick, like extra special ice cream that was starting to melt; if he was real good, he might get another one.
“You wanna go on that mega slide?” Bailey asked, looking up at the four-lane, multicoloured construction that dwarfed the children swarming around it like bees around a hive.
“Sure!” Cody sucked up the remainder of the milk. “I’ll race you!”
Bailey seemed to have forgotten all about her drink as they headed off. Cody was too fast and, being small, managed to negotiate the maze of parents and toddlers with ease. Then, of course, there was the climb. Bailey had longer legs and was as thin as a pencil, but Cody was on the ladder first and imagined he was in a race on a TV game show.
“And look at Nelson! He’s gonna do it!” he cried, trying to sound like an overwrought commentator. Bailey was a couple of steps behind him. The first one at the top of the slide would be the first one at the bottom and suddenly, nothing else mattered. He had to win. He had to beat a thirteen-year-old girl.
There were two rungs to go as he reached breathlessly for the top. Bailey was within an arm’s length. “I’m gonna win! I’m gonna win!” he screeched.
“No, you’re fucking not!” came a deep guttural growl from below as Cody felt a hand grip his shoulder like a steel claw that could have easily crushed every bone in his body. He shrieked in pain and felt himself falling—through a space that was dark and cold and seemed to go on forever. He hit the floor with a force that made his head spin, and for a few seconds, everything went black.
When he looked up, there were several concerned faces looking down at him.
“Are you okay?” asked a woman with strange pink hair.
“That girl pulled him off the ladder!” a boy with a pair of Harry Potter glasses yelled, pointing across the room. “I saw her! She pulled him!”
Cody blinked. Everything was back in focus, but his brain felt as if it were floating inside his head.
“Is there someone with you, sweetheart?” another woman asked.
Cody nodded and tried to sit up. The woman with pink hair placed a hand on his shoulder, restraining him. “Stay still,” she said. “Just in case you’ve broken something.”
“I’m okay,” Cody grunted, pushing away the woman’s hand. By the time his parents arrived, he was sitting up,
“Oh my god!” his mother shrieked. “What happened? Are you okay?”
The kid who looked like Harry Potter was still hanging around. “Some girl pulled him of the ladder,” he repeated, looking around for the culprit.
“What girl?” Cody’s father asked in a really angry voice that usually meant he was about to start shouting at someone.
“The one with red hair. I think she ran away.”
Cody scrambled to his feet. “I’m okay, I just fell,” he said.
“No you didn’t! I saw it!” the kid insisted.
Now his mum and dad were staring straight at him. “Bailey? Did Bailey do this?”
Reluctantly, Cody nodded. The kid with the glasses wasn’t going to give up on this one. His parents looked at each other. Bailey was in major trouble, he could tell.
“I don’t think she meant to,” he added anxiously. “She was just trying to stop me beating her to the top.”
His father ruffled his hair and smiled. “As long as you’re okay. We’ve got you a burger, if you want it?”
Cody grinned. Even the thought of a burger made his tummy rumble, but when he got back to the table, Bailey was sitting with her head in her hands, rocking back and forth, and her mother looked as if she were going to cry.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what got into her!”
His mum and dad nodded coldly. His father didn’t shout, but Cody hated seeing Bailey so upset, even though he was pretty mad at her too. She’d used that weird voice again. Bailey usually talked in quite a squeaky voice, which was a bit annoying, but he still preferred it to the croaky one.
“Are you okay, babe?” Nicky asked.
Cody nodded, taking a bite out of his burger.
“I’ve told this one we’re going home tomorrow.” She glared angrily at Bailey. “I’m not putting up with this—”
Bailey dropped her hands, looking up. “Noooooooo!” she cried. “I’m not going!”
“I’ve warned you twice already, young l
ady!” Her mother looked even more fierce. “I told you this would happen if you didn’t behave!”
Bailey let out a wail that silenced the room. Everyone was staring at her. Even the kids seemed to stop dead in their tracks. Across the opposite side of the café, the wheels of an empty pushchair began to spin furiously. Cody watched, spellbound, as it hurtled across the room straight at a family of four who sat with their drinks and plates of fries. They had no time to escape; he heard a scream as the buggy collided with the table, sending the food and drinks skimming across the floor.
The two kids bawled. Their mother held her leg with a hand covered in blood. A couple of staff rushed to help, along with several other mums and dads. Cody’s parents both stared at Bailey, whose face was pale and drawn. Bailey’s mother looked as if she were going to throw up, holding her chest and taking deep breaths.
Cody wanted to cry. Something had got into his friend and turned her into a monster. The walls were closing in. He stood suddenly and, with a sweep of his arm, pushed away the chair and took off, running as fast as he could, dodging between the tables and ignoring his parents’ shouts as he crashed through the multicoloured doors. There was no time to look back, and even if his father was behind him, his legs wouldn’t carry him any faster.
It was probably no more than a few minutes before he collapsed in the shade of a tree on the edge of the woods. There were times when he just needed to be on his own. Times when he felt he didn’t really belong in this world. Times when he believed no one understood what it was like to be different—a freaky kid that no one really liked.
Chapter Twenty-Six
News of the pushchair incident travelled through the park within the hour. Blakely heard the whispers and did his best to refute the tales of a poltergeist terrorising the soft-play centre.
“What the hell happened?” Penny seemed perplexed by the whole thing.
The restaurant was busy with lunchtime diners, and Blakely took the call from his wife in the staff quarters behind the bar. “I wasn’t there, Pen, but apparently, one of the kids had a bit of a meltdown and next thing, this pushchair flies across the room and crashes into a table full of people.”
Penny gasped. “On its own?”
“That’s the story, but I’m guessing it’s an exaggeration. I’m betting some kid pushed the chair while everyone was looking at the girl who was screaming like a banshee.”
“Do you know who it was?”
“Yeah.” Blakely lowered his voice. “It was the girl who got lost in the woods.”
After half a minute, Penny asked, “And have you seen her since?”
“No, but that kid who saw Amelia’s father was there, and according to the grapevine, he panicked and ran out.”
“That blonde kid? Chucky?”
Blakely’s wife’s reference to the doll was no longer funny. Cody Nelson’s face still haunted him. There was nothing strange about those eyes. They were an engaging shade of blue, and they could have been looking up at him from the pages of a catalogue. It was almost as if the kid could see right inside his head, and whatever anyone thought, that boy could never have known Jacob Root existed. If anyone was going to send inanimate objects into a spin, it was him, not the girl.
“It will all die down by the end of the day,” he assured Penny. “It’s probably best just to laugh it off.” Blakely could hear the murmur of conversation in the background.
“Well, maybe you could come and do your laughing over here,” she said, “because anyone who isn’t eating in the restaurant is over here in the kids’ play area looking for the girl from The Exorcist.”
***
Cody sat outside the lodge with a glass of blackcurrant juice. It hadn’t taken long before his parents started asking a whole heap of questions about Bailey, but at least he’d not been told off. Maybe they had seen how crazy she’d gone.
“Listen, Dee,” his mother said, “has Bailey told you anything—you know—private?”
“What like?”
“Well, you didn’t really want to play with her after she got lost in the woods and then…she pulled you off that ladder. That’s a pretty mean thing to do. Very dangerous, too.”
It was good to have them onside, because it could have all gone so wrong. He had cut and run, the way he often did at school when the going got tough, and he’d always get into big trouble because the teachers would call his parents to tell them. Eventually, they’d figured out his hiding places; his favourite was the staff car park, but the CCTV cameras were fixed so high on the walls it didn’t take them long to find him. Then again, pulling someone from the top of a slide was really bad. He’d never done anything like that. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad kid after all.
“I know you really liked that girl at first, and your dad and I are wondering if you’re telling us everything. You said she was weird—did she say something to you?”
Cody didn’t answer. They were being nice, and if he told them about the scary voice thing, they might get angry, especially if it was something to do with dead people.
“Dee, it’s important that you tell us. Bailey’s mother is very worried about some of the things she’s been doing. If you can tell us anything that might help…”
Cody shrugged. He liked Nicky and didn’t want her to worry, so maybe it was worth taking a chance. “Promise you won’t get mad at me?”
“No, we won’t, I promise.”
Cody folded his plastic straw into a concertina, which sprang open as he released it. “I don’t care if you believe in ghosts, there’s something scary in those woods.”
“And what do you think it is?”
“Jacob told me never to go any further than the cottage.” He looked up into his mother’s eyes, almost challenging her to question him. “Bailey went the wrong way. She thought it was her mother calling her but it wasn’t. It was one of them!”
“Them? Who’s them?”
“I don’t know, but Bailey came out all different.”
“Has she spoken to you in a strange voice, like an old lady?”
Cody nodded. “She told me to stay away from the woods.”
He saw that look in his mother’s eyes. They were deep and dark, and that usually meant she was frightened. “Why? Has she said something to her mum?”
His mother nodded. “I can’t tell you what it was. But it was very rude.”
Cody thought this might be a good time to talk about his special friend. “Mum…” He looked down at his glass of juice. “I’ve met someone like me.”
His mother frowned. “Like you?”
“Yeah, who sees dead people.”
This time, his words were met by silent acceptance.
“And it’s not another kid. She’s a grown-up. I met her at that grave this morning.” He didn’t wait for a reaction. “I can find her if you want. Her name is Jenny.”
***
Jenny was almost glad for an excuse to leave the lodge. Jake was still smarting over her reluctance to make love the previous night. He wouldn’t admit it, but he got a kick out of having sex when there was a chance they might be heard or interrupted. It was quite possible that Isaac had been conceived in the back of her Mini Clubman on a dark country lane when they had a perfectly comfortable bed less than two miles away.
His mood hadn’t improved when Blakely called at the lodge to tell her Cody’s mother would like to meet up for a chat. “They’re having problems with their little boy,” Blakely had told her. “I believe you met the kid at the grave?”
Jenny didn’t want to spend too long with the Nelsons. They sounded pretty desperate, but this was supposed to be a holiday—a break. Darren was wandering around with a face like a slapped arse, and Kayla was toying with her emotions like a cat with a mouse. Then, of course, there was the incident with her father and his odd behaviour. She was looking forward to packing up the car and heading home.
Laura Nelson sat outside their lodge with a glass of wine and greeted her with a forced smile. “Hi, I�
�m guessing you’re Jenny.”
Jenny nodded and stepped up onto the balcony. Cody was nowhere to be seen, and his mother was acting as if she were expecting to be reproached for her lack of parenting skills.
Laura rolled her eyes as Jenny pulled out a chair. “I’m sorry about this. Peter and I aren’t really rolling with all this paranormal stuff. We’re really concerned about his mental health, to be honest.”
“I’ve been through it all, Mrs. Nelson. That Grave—Amelia’s grave—is only there because she appeared to me in a dream.”
Laura’s eyes widened. “That was you? The minister at St. Jude’s told us all about it.”
“Yeah, that was me,” Jenny confirmed. “I went through hell. I ended up in a coma, and that girl took me through every second of her final moments on Earth. I can still remember them vividly.”
Laura looked astounded. “And…and that’s how you knew her body was in that lake?”
“We knew she’d drowned, we just didn’t know where. But when my father discovered there was water in the woods, it all fell into place.”
“That’s incredible. I mean, it’s not that I didn’t believe the minister, but…”
Jenny smiled. “But you find it easier to trust me?”
“Well, kind of, yes. You don’t look the type to make things up.”
“Believe me, there were times I thought I was losing my mind. I ended up in therapy.”
Laura shook her head slowly. “I worry about Cody. Why does he see these…people? These spirits?”
“I could take you friend of ours—an old professor—who can explain things a lot better than I ever could. Children and animals are more sensitive to the spirit world, and it’s more likely that when Cody grows up and begins to focus on other things, it will all stop.”
Laura seemed relieved. “You really think so? You think he’ll just grow up like a normal kid?”
“He is normal,” Jenny corrected. “He just sees things. There’s nothing wrong with his head.”