by Fiona Law
“The fancy dress party?”
“Oh! Er…not for ages. I…er…was just trying it out, like. Er…to see if it works. I thought no one would mind if I pottered about the house like this.” Gemma probably would have burst into a flood of tears, but a searing pain in her eyes took her mind off her emotional angst. She rubbed them automatically, which made the pain worse. “Look,” she said, her voice strained, “the green paint is burning my eyes. I’d better wash it off. But before I go, I think the ghost saw me. She seemed astonished, frightened, almost and then she disappeared.”
Oswin raised his eyebrows. “Really? Has she ever done that before?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never waited around long enough to see. Anyway, this is really burning!” she said, pressing her hands to her bloodshot, streaming eyes as she fumbled for the door. “I’ll meet you in the kitchen in a bit, yeah?”
* * * *
As soon as she had washed her face and hands to their usual pale hue, and soothed her eyes with cotton wool dipped in milk, Gemma sat with Oswin in the kitchen, discussing the morning’s events over coffee and biscuits.
“Well, even if the head gear is a big flop, the hand device measures the fields very well,” remarked Oswin. “The readings are almost down to normal, now.”
“I think you’re brilliant to have it work so well on the first prototype.” Gemma beamed, removing the cotton wool pads from her eyes. They were still a bit red, but they’d stopped watering.
Oswin blushed and coughed. “Pity we can’t say the same about the head gear.”
“Don’t be so negative! If you keep on working at it, you’ll iron out all the…”
Gemma stopped and blinked and stared at the washing machine. The back of her neck prickled. The machine had been puttering along nicely through a delicate cycle. As it began to spin suddenly at its full 12 000 revolutions, a shadow bounded from its vicinity and streaked over their heads to vanish somewhere by the wall clock.
Gemma and Oswin ducked instinctively as though a wasp had dived at them from nowhere. The ghost detector set off in a volley of pips and static squeals. Oswin later swore he saw a second shadow closely following the first.
“Did you see that?” he breathed as they stared at each other, both pale and shaking. Gemma let out a sob, her hands darted between her mouth and her chest. But in a moment she collected herself enough to remember they were supposed to be recording this sort of thing. She grappled with pen and pages as Oswin, picking up her cue, shakily read out the reading.
“It hates us, I can feel it,” Gemma whispered. “The housewife ghost is…just there, in comparison. But this, whatever it is, loathes us.”
Oswin stared at the meter. He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed, “I dunno, this seems wrong. The readings are dropping much quicker than before.”
“Is it…is it malfunctioning?”
There was a long silence. Gemma played with the cotton wool pads, squeezing drops of milk out on the table, while Oswin fiddled with the detector. At last he said, “Well, I’ll run some tests, then probably rebuild it, anyway. Like you said, it’s only the prototype, after all. I think I’d better disguise it as a toy of some sort. That ought to fool Griswold and Beryl. It shouldn’t take long; it took just a couple of days to build this one. And the helmet—well that needed to be rebuilt anyway.”
There was another pause as Oswin studied the gadget again, pressing buttons here and there.
“Oh, well,” he said at last, “it’s probably malfunctioning. The readings are already back to normal. Far too early according to the earlier incidents!”
“But Oswin,” Gemma replied in a hushed voice, “that wasn’t the ghost I usually see. Not at all.”
“Are you sure?”
Gemma nodded. “I told you. This wasn’t the housewife. I’ve seen her before often enough. She’s got a totally different…feel about her. This was something different…a shadowy thing. I felt it more than saw it. Don’t you sometimes wake up in the night and feel it lurking about upstairs? I always assumed it was the same ghost, but maybe...” her voice trailed to a whisper. “Maybe there’s more than one ghost.”
Oswin folded his arms, then pushed his glasses higher along the bridge of his nose and nodded. “Hmm…It’s either the same ghost in different moods, or two separate entities,” he said at last. “And one’s a lot nastier than the other.”
Chapter Seven
A lull in any sightings over the next few days allowed Gemma to relax once again and Oswin used the time to get on with his next prototype. Gemma kept forgetting this was a school project and, feeling guilty at all the work her cousin was going through on her behalf, she did what she could to help. She named the handheld ghost detector the ‘Ghost-O-Meter’, covered the diary in wrapping paper and wrote in it every day, even if it was just to say “nothing strange today.” She brought him up mugs of coffee, stopping sometimes to chat a while too.
“It’s nice to have someone agree with me that this house always has funny things happening in it,” she remarked as she lay on Oswin’s bed, tracing dance steps on the wall with her sock-clad feet. He was putting the finishing touches to his next ‘Ghost-O-Meter.’
“You mean, ‘unexplained’?” he corrected, without pausing in his work.
“Exactly! Like when the fridge defrosted on its own.”
“Your dad said one of us must have accidentally flicked the switch off and we thought it was him.”
“But we know it wasn’t any of us and who’s to say he really did it, like we thought?” said Gemma. “Plus when you add up all the times the geyser’s been mysteriously turned up—and down! And the times the tap in the bathroom just starts dripping, as though someone turned it on…”
“Or didn’t turn it off properly…” muttered Oswin, as he dropped a silvery liquid ball onto a chip board.
“Aw, come on! We all turn it off properly. Things just go missing in this house then turn up weeks later in odd places.”
“Yeah,” Oswin agreed sceptically. “But it could just be that we’re a careless bunch. Which reminds me, Beryl was going on about a Coast sweater she’s lost. She wanted to go through my cupboards…”
“Remember that time you thought we had burglars because the toilet had just flushed as you came home—and the house was empty?”
Oswin stopped his work, soldering iron in his hand. Only Gemma had believed his account of the flushing loo.
“Yeah, right,” he said. “Spooky, that was.” Frowning, he bent over the chipboard again. “Perhaps we should take a reading whenever that sort of thing happens.”
“It may either prove or disprove that poltergeist theory.”
“Although, ghosts of the spectral sort—I can swallow that, but a poltergeist…mm…I dunno, so much.”
Oswin consulted some notes then worked in silence for a while, as they both mused over the possibilities, then he said, “Of course, it is consistent with the ley line theory: the idea that different types supernatural anomalies are…er…attracted to this place.”
Gemma arched her eyebrows. “Like I said the other day—more than one type of ghost?”
“That’s right, there may be more than we’ve bargained for.” Oswin’s eyes brightened with a new idea. “They may come and go, for all we know. Fascinating!”
“Okay...I could add another column in the ghost diary, for when strange things happen. What shall I call it? Poltergeist? Gremlins…?” She sat up cross-legged on the bed and reached for the ghost diary and a pen.
“Mm, good idea. But I think something more scientific would look better on my project.”
They debated the issue for a while and eventually settled for Unexplained Influential Phenomena or U.I.P. although Gemma thought that Poltergeist would have sounded nicer. She sucked her pen absently as she recalled many odd happenings t
hat she had shrugged off as her imagination, one after the other. Perhaps it was her frame of mind at that moment, but she thought she could hear movement—some activity—downstairs.
Looking at Oswin, she whispered, “Did you hear that?”
“Mmm?” he answered absently, busy aiming melting drops of wire on the board.
Gemma paused, wondering whether or not to tell him to stop and listen to the movements downstairs. Considering their immediate discussion, she knew he would assume she was over reacting. He would say so, insist that they check and then, on finding none of his ‘paranormal activity,’ he would have her note it down in the records book as a false alarm. Due to her being unnerved.
So she changed her tune somewhat. “Coffee?” she offered.
“Mm…Ta!”
Gemma jumped up and, surreptitiously keeping the records book with her, tiptoed down to the kitchen. Oh, yes, from now on she was going to investigate every one of her suspicions, take them seriously and not assume that it was all down to her imagination. Every creaking noise in the old house, every shadow that flittered, was going to be explained or marked down as officially unexplained.
As Gemma neared the bottom of the stairs, her heart leaped into her throat and clung there, thudding wildly. There was definitely movement in the kitchen. Edging nearer, she recognized the sound of the kettle being filled. Numbness began to crawl over her as images of what spectre might be lurking with the kettle in its hand flickered through her mind, but with her first glance at the source of the noise, Gemma’s heart slid down to its proper position with a plop. She felt a fool, for having not realized that the noises were the clumsy movements of Beryl.
“Oh,” she said. “I see…er…”
“I can’t help you with anything now,” warned Beryl flatly. “I’m in the middle of studying. With Ronnie!”
From Beryl’s flushing cheeks, the coy toss of her head, Gemma surmised that Ronnie was a bloke.
“I was just coming to make some coffee,” she said lamely, hanging back in the doorway.
“Well, you’ll have to wait. I’m busy here!” Beryl hardly looked at Gemma as she spoke, and bustled about with a sense of urgency, flinging cupboard doors open and slamming them shut again. “Where’s the cream? Don’t we have some coffee cream?”
“In the fridge,” Gemma said.
“In those little individual pots, like in the restaurant?”
“In the fridge, I said.”
Beryl finally accepted this, and rushed to the fridge, bustling Gemma aside. “Mind out the way!”
She hung onto the fridge door, peering inside, and muttering, “Hmm…what’s this…It should have been chucked out ages ago…Ah—here it is…wait a minute!” Beryl reached in behind the mayonnaise and pulled out half of a six pack of cider. She grinned wickedly as she held it aloft. “Aha! This is way better than coffee.”
“Not for studying it isn’t,” said Gemma quietly.
Beryl’s selective hearing clicked into action and, humming to herself, she fetched two glasses and re-applied her lip-gloss.
“Perhaps cans will be better, more spontaneous,” she said, pausing in the doorway. “Glasses may be too posh. You know, we are students after all. What do you think?”
“Coffee! Really, I think coffee is best.”
Beryl seemed to consider this for a moment.
“Um…Yeah, right…impromptu. Yes!” She put the glasses down and called to Ronnie as she went upstairs, “Sorry Ronnie, we’re out of cream…and coffee. But I’ve found a nice alternative!”
“Okay,” said Gemma to the doorway, as the kettle began to whistle. “So, can I use the water?”
Beryl did not hear Gemma’s plaintive calls; she was too busy checking her reflection in the bathroom mirror before entering her boudoir. Chuckling to herself, she picked her way over books and papers and wedged herself close beside a dark haired boy of seventeen. He wore glasses, but had a square jaw and a sensuous mouth—fit for any hero—and although he seemed gangly, beneath his loose shirt gym grown muscles were rippling.
“Ah, sweet!” he said, looking up at her. His eyes were an unusual shade of hazel, almost yellow. They looked like the eyes of a tiger.
Beryl opened the first can with a crack and a fizz. “Now,” she said huskily, “run that theory by me again.”
Ronnie shifted uncomfortably and began…
Chapter Eight
Gemma looked nervously at Beryl’s closed door as she carried two mugs of coffee with cream upstairs.
“Beryl’s drinking,” she told Oswin as she set coffee down. “And I mean, proper drink. Cider.”
“Well, she is eighteen, Gem,” he pointed out, cricking his back with a deft movement of his shoulders, then taking up his mug. “Thanks! It’s allowed, isn’t it?”
“Not by Dad, it isn’t.”
“She’ll never allow herself to be caught out!”
Gemma leaned in, deep concern furrowing her brows. “But there’s a boy from her college. She’s got him in there and the door’s shut. And they’re drinking.”
Oswin considered this for a moment. “I thought they were supposed to be studying.”
“Exactly! And so does he, I think. But now she’s trying to seduce him with drink. What if she gets her way?”
“Ugh!” Oswin shuddered. “Don’t speak such hideous thoughts out loud. Not when I’m trying to drink my coffee.” Why did girls always have to bring sex into everything, he wondered?
“Yeah, but what if she succeeds?”
“She won’t.”
“And Dad catches them…”
“Stop it!” Oswin set his mug down and rounded sternly on Gemma. “She won’t! He won’t! Beryl would never let herself get caught at anything. She is very scheming, you know. Always in control. Plus she won’t be thinking of—ugh!—that now. She’s frantic about the mock exams.”
Gemma shook her head, “You didn’t see her in the kitchen! But I did and I know what she’s planning.”
Oswin sighed and stared at his cousin. “Fine!” he said at last. “Beryl’s in her room and she’s drinking and snogging some poor, unsuspecting bloke. But, you know what? It’s not my concern. I’m busy working on my term project. And I suggest you find something to keep your mind off what your sister is up to in the privacy of her own room.”
He gave her a stern look and turned back to his work. Gemma sat and stared ahead at nothing. After a pause Oswin said, without looking up, “By the way, thanks for the coffee. It’s nice.”
“I’d better get on with my homework,” Gemma sighed, getting up. She left his room slowly, with a couple of backward glances but he was too busy looking from sheets of diagrams to his construction to notice her. She sighed again and walked out in a slow ballet march. On the landing, she heard a muffled cry coming from Beryl’s room. She hovered by the door, unable to bring herself to move on, listening…
* * * *
“Give it back!” commanded Beryl in her room, her eyes glowing.
“I told you! I ain’t got it!” cried Ronnie, squirming, as she tried to frisk him. Her fingers dug in everywhere, like a series of ram-rods poking at his ribs.
“Aaah! No! I’m ticklish!” he shrieked, trying to ward her off with flailing arms, but she lunged with more determination, knocking him down and kneeling on top of him.
“Cut it out!” he shrieked, squirming and trying to un-trap his left arm. “Aaah! No, Beryl! You’re freaking me out!”
* * * *
Outside the room, Gemma leaned closer to the door to hear better…
* * * *
Ronnie struggled free, threw himself at the door—making poor Gemma jump back in fright—and grabbing at the handle, but the door wouldn’t open.
“What the? You…you’ve locked the door!” he cried, whipping r
ound to face his assailant. With his back against the door, he stared at Beryl in disbelief. She took advantage of his moment of disarmed surprise and lunged at him again.
“Come ‘ere you!”
Panic stricken, he shoved her roughly away and, running over her bed, reached the window—safety—before she could pick herself up. He jumped out.
“Aaaah!” Ronnie’s screams rebounded down the street as he hurtled from the second story window down into a flower bed full of shrubs and rose bushes. For a moment he lay in frightening stillness. The world paused in freeze-frame, waiting, then he twitched.
“Aaah! Jeez!” he wheezed as he picked himself up and scrambled out. Something rigid thudded onto him, grasping him by the upper arm, squeezing painfully at his knotted muscles with a deep, menacing snarl.
“What’s this?”
Griswold’s hands closed in even tighter on Ronnie, making him twist and shriek as he yanked the lad out of the bushes with an alarmingly powerful tug, as though pulling weeds.
He put his face close to Ronnie’s who quivered, pale and bleeding, like a vole in the jaws of cat.
“What were you doing to my daughter?”
“Sir…Please, man!” Ronnie’s head flopped about limply as Griswold’s shook him roughly, fireworks of pain cart-wheeling around his various scratches and bruises. A cold sweat of pinpricks scurried over his flesh as nausea swelled up inside him like a flood behind a damn wall. And it broke.
“What the…” Griswold gasped and fell into a fuchsia bush in the attempt to get his feet out of the way, as Ronnie bent over double, his body racked in spasms.
Griswold watched Ronnie heave and heave again.
“You’re drunk, lad!” he snarled scornfully.
“Father, no! Ronnieeee!”
Beryl’s cries came from her window. “Father! You beast! What have you done to him? Hold on, Ronnie, I’m coming!”