by Fiona Law
“Yeah, I know,” she said absently, as she sketched what she had seen with remarkable ease and accuracy.
“I never knew you could draw,” Oswin remarked, looking over her shoulder. “That’s really good! Looks quite spooky, though.”
“It was. I don’t like those little things!” Gemma shuddered. “I used to assume it was all one ghost, but now I know they’re not the housewife ghost. And she doesn’t seem so frightening to me now.”
“How do you feel about being the only one who saw them, though?” Oswin asked. He wasn’t merely curious; he needed the data for his project. Without proper scientific back up and psychological analysis, it would all be a load of prattling nonsense in his teacher’s eyes.
“It makes me feel kind of…insane,” Gemma said quietly.
“Well, you’re not! We’ve got proof that you saw something.” Oswin patted the detector. “We’ve got proof! You’re creative and imaginative and wonderful. But you’re not crazy. Don’t let anyone tell you you’re mad!”
In the pause that followed, Gemma continued drawing quietly.
“I was thinking that you may be psychic, though,” Oswin said. “Psychic people probably have some quality that makes them able to see these charged fields. It’s like a gift, Gem, like your dancing. You’re gifted.”
Chapter Thirteen
Things were quiet for a few days. Griswold was home a lot more than usual. It was the football finals and he had arranged his work schedule so that he could watch as many games as possible. Beryl had stocked him up with enough of his favorite brand of lager and snacks to keep him happy whilst riveted to his favorite telly chair. Having no sensitivity to paranormal activity, she sat in the chair next to his—the housewife ghost’s favorite chair—and watched a bit of the game with him. This meant Gemma was left alone more than usual and life was generally calmer in the house.
In fact, the house was filled with an air of optimism. Not only was Griswold happier because he was watching the game, but the girls knew this and made use of his relaxed pre-occupation to ask requests of him. Things like, ‘Can I have a bit of extra pocket money to get those new shoes?’ and ‘Is this skirt too short to wear down to my mate’s house? Thought not.’ And ‘Can I go to that fancy dress party, then?’
Gemma chose her timing down to the last second. She waited outside the door until she heard the adverts come on. Father hardly had time to ask Beryl to get him another can of beer when Gemma pushed the door open and appeared like a superhero answering a distress call, with a fresh lager in her hand and a top-up of Bombay mix.
“Daddy, you never gave me a straight answer about…about…Oswin!” She faltered, because she was looking at Beryl sitting on the housewife ghost, who was knitting her dull sweater from behind Beryl’s bulk. Beryl herself was shelling pistachios and popping them gracefully into her mouth. So she looked both fuddy duddy and exotically elegant at once. And alarmingly strange with two pairs of arms working independently. Gemma felt a rush of amusement and fear both at once. She fought to quell her emotions, as she continued.
“…Oswin!…about the fancy dress party. It’s in a Church hall. Everyone going is in my age group. So can I go?” She gabbled her request out and rushed to the door to call again for Oswin, before turning back to hear Griswold’s reply.
“Hmm? What party is this then? What about Oswin?” asked her father blearily; it was hard for him to switch his brain from football to girls’ parties so quickly. And Gemma’s dancing about didn’t help his confusion.
“Nothing about Oswin. Stop calling Oswin, Gemma, you’ll only confuse Father,” Beryl interrupted then turned to Griswold and spoke loudly and slowly. “It’s Rebecca Wilson’s birthday party; she wants to go to it.”
Beryl held a pistachio daintily poised to be popped in her mouth as soon as she had finished talking, the ghost’s pair of hands knitting rhythmically all the time. “She’s been asking about it for ages. It’s the one she wants to go to, dressed as that Shrek character. All green.”
“Who—Rebecca?” frowned Griswold.
“No. Our Gemma. It’s all properly chaperoned. Let her go!” She winked exuberantly at Gemma and grinned.
“Well, all right, I suppose so,” Griswold grumbled, “if it’s properly chaperoned. What time does it end?”
But right then the advertisements ended and his attention was taken.
Oswin, having heard Gemma’s distressed call, knew by the tone what it meant and came bounding down the stairs with his detector at the ready. He alone noticed Gemma point at Beryl and, coming round the back of the chairs, aimed at Beryl and pulled the trigger. He couldn’t see the ghost, and therefore didn’t know that, with a fleeting look of annoyance, she had vanished upon his entrance.
“Wheeeeeeee click click click…” went the detector.
“Oi!” yelled Griswold.
“I beg your pardon!” Beryl gasped, bristling angrily. “It is extremely rude and aggressive—so much so in fact, that it is illegal to…”
“Oi! I’m trying to watch the game! Shut it or get out. Now! The pair of you.”
Oswin, having taken a reading, muttered an apology as he scampered out at once. Beryl opened and shut her mouth before shaking her head in tearful indignation and turning back to the telly.
By the end of the game Beryl was livid. She cornered Oswin and Gemma and had strong and lengthy words with the pair of them.
“I don’t appreciate this blatant attack on my person by you two,” she said as she served them a warmed-up pizza for their tea. It was dry and burnt along the edges and they suspected that Beryl was glad it had turned out like that. “How do you think I felt, being targeted in that way? It was a sinister attack. I felt like an IRA victim. You took turns continually to shoot me in the back of the head with that stupid toy gun that Oswin’s taken to carrying about. Oh, and it looks disturbingly childish, by the way! Sorry, but I feel I have to tell you that. It’s getting too late for you to suddenly start enjoying your childhood!”
“I thought I’d give being a proper child a go before I reached puberty,” he replied as he bit into his slice of pizza. Beryl and Griswold had always gone on about him being unnaturally mature.
Gemma almost choked on a piece of pizza and kicked him from under the table.
“It’s not like it seems,” she said when she recovered from her coughing fit. “It’s a…it’s like a test. For Oswin’s project. He had to take certain measurements.”
Oswin was unable to speak for himself just then, as he was battling to get a bit of crust ground down enough to be swallowed.
Beryl harped on. “And you only got away with victimizing me because Father was so engrossed in the game. You were clever enough to turn down the sound of the gun as you went along with your prolonged and vicious attack.”
“Beryl, please! It’s not like that at all,” Gemma said.
But there was no placating Beryl. “I know what this is about,” she said with tearful bitterness as she plonked herself down at the kitchen table. “It’s because of Raj. Because I’m seeing a bloke from the arts block, isn’t it—someone who isn’t academic enough for the likes of you?”
Gemma and Oswin stared for a moment. Beryl took a mighty bite out of a slice of pizza and chewed like a weepy camel working on a piece of cud.
They had no idea Beryl had a boyfriend. When did this happen? Just then the tap at the sink opened up, and let out sorry dribble of water with gulping sounds. Quick as gun-slinger, Oswin whipped out the Ghost-O-Meter, aimed, and fired.
“Click, click, phut…” It indicated nothing.
But just then, Gemma screamed, convinced of a scuttling movement across the table. A feeling of malice swept over her like a gust of wind and she found herself inexplicably gulping down tears. There was a clunk on the table. Someone—something—knocked over the pepper grinder. And Oswin
aimed at the table.
“Wheeeeeeeeee click click click pop!”
Beryl jumped, almost choked, and rose up with bulging eyes.
“Right! That’s it!” she yelled, her face flushing to puce. “I am not sitting at the table with the pair of you!” She grabbed what was left of the communal pizza and marched off to her bedroom.
There was a moment’s silence. Griswold who had been asleep—full of Bombay mix, lager and footie—in his chair in the front room, stirred and coughed. Then all was still again. Gemma sniffed and wiped her eyes.
“You got quite a fright,” Oswin said quietly.
“I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye,” Gemma whispered. Her face was pale. “Something lunging at me, filled with hatred and…malice! Yes, malice, like it would destroy me if it could. It was—creepy. Do you ever get that?”
“No, not really,” Oswin said, “apart from Beryl. But the ghost meter says it wasn’t all in your head. Unlike the dripping tap, which I thought was something.” He grinned ruefully. “Trouble is with this other entity is that it’s so difficult to detect properly. I mean, with the ghost, when she’s there—there she is! You see her. Whereas with this sort of thing, it could be just normal knocks and bumps that are genuinely explained away, or it could be something else, at any given time.”
“You mean, this sort of thing comes and goes without being noticed, more than we realize?”
“Exactly! And it does things—moves objects, and breaks stuff…shoves pink sweaters in the loo.”
“That’s true! And the only time I’ve had a good look at it, was when there was a pair of them. They were playing in the cigarette smoke of the old housewife ghost. Not worrying any of us in particular. Just…playing.” Gemma paused a while before asking, “Do you…do you think they’re fairies?”
Oswin shrugged and scraped his fingers through his hair. “Possibly. But the angle I’m going to concentrate on in my project is that whatever they are, their little tricks are not as sweet and innocent as they may seem. Like you felt—they may be malignant.”
Gemma could not disagree with that and they both decided to be extra vigilant about things falling over and of other phenomena, such as burning smells.
So that was why, when a few days later, they both rushed around the house in a bit of a panic.
Chapter Fourteen
“I can smell burning! Can you smell burning?” Gemma gabbled, bumping into Oswin on the landing.
“Yeah! What can it be?”
“It’s definitely not downstairs.” Gemma sniffed frantically. “I’ve checked all around downstairs.”
Sniffing, they moved upstairs, following the sent like a pair of bloodhounds.
“It’s coming from Beryl’s room!” Gemma exclaimed, stopping suddenly. She was beginning to feel a tad dizzy with all the sniffing.
Oswin, crinkling his nose, paused and nodded. They tapped on the door.
“Beryl?” enquired Gemma quietly then louder, more urgently. “Beryl are you alright?”
There was a sigh and an irritable tut, audible from outside the closed door.
“Come!” Beryl called haughtily. But they were already bursting in.
She sat amid her usual tumble of books and files, frowning up at them from the floor. “Yes? What is it?”
“Oh!” Gemma faltered. “I…we thought we smelled something burning.”
“Well, actually you did.” Beryl pointed to a newly bought incense burner, with a joss stick burning on it.
“Ah, I see!” Oswin said. “What fragrance? Nag Champa?”
Gemma stared at the smoke twirling up and writhing around the room.
“It’s to help me concentrate, in my studying,” Beryl said defensively. “The woman at the shop told me about it. It’s authentic. Us British don’t make proper use of all the elements of aromatherapy around us.”
Oswin watched Gemma’s eyes flitting as she watched the twisting smoke. Her pupils were wide and her mouth set in a rigid line of fear.
“Right,” he said absently.
“There’s nothing wrong with adopting a new and artistic way of thinking. The new age sciences have so much to offer…” Beryl prattled on in a dreamy manner.
“Right,” Oswin, said reaching slowly for his belt. “I’m just going to take a little shot at the smoke.”
“Wheeeeeeeeeeee click, click, click pop!” screeched the Ghost-O-Meter, followed by a shocked pause.
“That is not funny!” Beryl cried. “Just because he’s a performing art student, you think you’ve got to tease me about it! He can’t help it if he’s not academically inclined! He’s clever in his own, creative way!”
“No, I wasn’t teasing you! I just had to take a shot at the smoke…er…boys stuff…you know?” Oswin smiled lamely and shunted his specs up the bridge of his nose.
Beryl’s eyes narrowed, “I know what this is all about. I know what all this shooting at things of mine and at me—at the back of my head—is all about! It’s because of Raj, isn’t it? Just because he’s not academic?”
“No, honest,” said Gemma turning to face the others. “It’s nice about you and Raj, honest.”
“Nice?” Beryl spat with mocking disbelief. “Nice? Huh! It’s a free country do you hear? I’ll go out with whomever I bloody well want to. Nothing is going to tear Raj and I apart—nothing! Now get out! I’m studying. Just because I am in a serious and committed relationship with a boy from the performing arts block, doesn’t meant that my studies are going to suffer. You’ll see! Now, leave me alone. Go on!”
There was no telling Beryl; Gemma and Oswin departed meekly. In any case they were itching to discuss issues more interesting to them than who Beryl was dating at present.
For Beryl’s part, left to dream and study simultaneously, this was the most exciting romance she had ever embarked on. Raj was artistic, not studious and the knowledge that his parents disapproved of his playing bass guitar in a friend’s garage on Saturdays, was an added bonus. Watching his rebellion was exhilarating and at little risk to herself. She stopped chewing her way through the classic novels and began to read urban fantasy paperbacks instead. She painted her nails black and borrowed some of his secret stash of Bizarre Magazines and had a go at writing lyrics for his tunes. Once she had spent a few afternoons visiting Raj at his home, she even began to try out Indian cuisine—the eating of it, that is, not the tedious cooking—and burnt incense in her room when Father was about and all around the house when he was out. Griswold played his role perfectly; he did not approve, especially when he learnt that Raj and his friends had formed a band that practised in a garage. And he was convinced that by burning incense, Beryl was disguising the smell of something more sinister, like cigarette smoke or—worse—cannabis.
Which is why Oswin, coming down for a cup of juice one evening, saw Griswold rummaging through the dust bin in the kitchen. Straightening up, red-faced, Griswold explained himself.
“Aha! Ashes!” he cried and beckoned to Oswin. “Look here boy, there are ashes in this bin and a sweet smell lingering in the air. I work my butt off to provide for these girls and this is how they repay me. By turning to drugs while I’m out slaving away for their futures.”
Oswin examined the ashes. “Actually, that’s long and thin. And see the strands of fibres left? That’s Beryl’s incense stick she was burning. She said the kitchen smelled funny.”
Griswold grunted, looking about with narrowed eyes. “Hmph! Well it does now!” He sniffed the air.
Oswin pointed to the packaging in the bin. “It was those samosas she heated up for our tea.”
“Hmm…” Griswold continued to scan the room. “The only reason for burning joss sticks in my day was to hide the sickly smell of cannabis!”
Oswin grinned. “Nah! Your Beryl is very straight, really. Out
rageous but square. Besides, it’s because of her boyfriend, isn’t it?”
“What boyfriend?”
“She…er…likes this bloke. And he’s into a bit of Gothic pop and incense, so she’s going for it too.” He shrugged trying to look as casual as he could. “That’s why she’s wearing that dreadful purple lipstick lately. Just a passing phase, really.”
“Excuse me!” Beryl boomed from the doorway. “Do you two mind telling me why are you men rummaging through the kitchen bin like a pair of homeless veterans outside McDonald’s?”
Oswin and Griswold jumped and both sprang to shut the bin lid. In the process it was knocked over and the day’s garbage spilled across the floor. Beryl stood over them in great disapproval as, on their hands and knees, they gathered up the trash.
“Hey, look at this!” gasped Oswin. He picked something small out of the strands of Gemma’s uneaten spaghetti.
“That’s mine!” Beryl cried, stepping forward to snatch it from Oswin’s grasp. “What’s it doing in the bin? Who threw my skull ring into the bin?”
Neither Griswold nor Oswin could answer her question.
“I want to know who did this,” she declared, looking about the room, as though expecting an answer. “This is a personal attack on me—throwing my skull ring into the bin! It’s proper silver and all!”
“Perhaps it got there by accident,” Oswin suggested at last.
“I took it off to wash the pots and…”
“Well, it could have ended up under a pile of cartons and into the bin,” Griswold suggested. But Beryl was not convinced.
“Excuse me! I’ll have you know that I am always far too careful with my jewelry to accidentally leave it lying about to be thrown away with the garbage. Not me. I always hang it on the tea towel peg,” she insisted. “There’s no way it could end up in the bin.”