by Fiona Law
An idea struck Oswin, “Let me shoot it for you,” he said.
“Don’t be daft, boy!” Griswold hissed, but his warning was too late. The gun gave a feeble wheeze and crackle before dying. Beryl stood gaping at Oswin.
“Hmm. Not a bad reading,” he muttered to himself. “But nothing conclusive.”
“How dare you! Father, do you see how he’s always shooting at me lately?”
“Now, don’t be paranoid, pet! The boy shoots at any old thing.”
Just then Gemma trailed in, practising a dance routine, “…two, three..s-l-i-d-e…ta…ta…one…uh, hello!…three…s-l-i-d-e…” she stopped dead and gasped then retreated very quickly, still dancing.
Oswin looked from Gemma to where she’d been looking when she gasped. He aimed and fired.
“Wheeeeeeee…click…click…click…pop!”
“There, see?” said Griswold. “The boy shoots at anything and everything.”
“This is not fair!” Beryl said as she stormed off to the front room. “I am being persecuted and no one notices!”
Griswold stared after her and sighed. “Well, clean this mess up, boy! What’s on telly tonight? That’s what I want, to relax in front of the box and unwind after a hard day’s work. Not come home to all this madness!”
He continued to complain as Oswin picked up the remaining rubbish and swept the floor with a brush and dustpan. “I can’t believe some of the things I come home to! Beryl with a boyfriend from some ‘block’ she keeps ranting about. Did you see him? He wears eye liner and buys her biker rings! And now she’s burning camouflaging scents and ranting and raving like a loony. And Gemma prancing around in a dreamlike state, painting herself all colors of the rainbow. Did you see the glazed look on her face, boy?” Griswold hissed. “I worry about these girls, boy, I really worry.”
“Gemma’s always been a bit dreamy,” Oswin said, fetching the dust pan and brush from the broom cupboard. “And Beryl…”
“Father!” Beryl called from the front room, “that reality program you like is on now!”
Griswold’s face lit up. “Now that’s what I’d like, boy!” he said, making for the door. “Spy cameras planted all through the house. Then I could keep a proper eye on these girls of mine.”
“Well, it’s easily done,” Oswin replied absently. “I doubt it would cost too much either.”
Griswold whipped round and gawped. “Really?”
“Father!”
“Yeah,” Oswin assured him. “I could set a few up in a couple of days. I know where to get them and all. A boy in my class is doing a project with…”
“Father!”
Griswold glanced over his shoulder distractedly. “Alright, alright, I’m coming!” He turned back to Oswin with a gleam in his eye and whispered, “tell you what, son, I’ll give you a cheque. You set it all up for me!” He rubbed his hands together and chuckled as he turned to go. Then he turned back. “Oh, and boy,” he said, “fetch me a nice cup of hot chocolate and a couple of biscuits into the front room will you? There’s a lad!” And he winked at Oswin before trotting off to watch his program.
Oswin shook his head, checked his watch and aimed his gun again. He had to go by memory, because he had been unable to see what Gemma had seen. Then he stopped. A slow smile spread across his face.
“Yes!” He punched the air. “Brilliant! Thank you, uncle Griswold!” Oswin chuckled to himself as he put the kettle on. “Thank you and all!”
Chapter Fifteen
After the weekend, when he’d come back from visiting home, Oswin glanced at Gemma’s latest recording in her ghost diary and confirmed that they matched his plotted readings.
“When do you have to hand this in?” Gemma asked. “Would you like me to take the pretty cover off?”
“It’s due in at the end of term. I guess it can stay the way it is. The important thing is how nicely the sightings match up with the readings.”
“It’s a pity it’s only me who sees anything,” she sighed.
Oswin smiled as he pulled out his notes on his unsuccessful headgear, “That may change,” he said. “I have Griswold’s…er…backing to install a few camera’s around the house.”
“Really? But I thought…”
“More important, is what he thinks. He’s asked me to put up surveillance cameras…”
“Why?” asked Gemma.
Oswin told her about Griswold’s worries that Beryl was smoking cannabis. At that they both sniggered before he continued. “He thinks if the house is rigged up like a TV reality programme, he’ll feel more at ease. Spying on you girls, and me too, I suppose.”
“Can you imagine what Beryl will say when she finds out?” Gemma gasped and covered her mouth with her hands.
“I shudder to think!”
In less than two weeks the cameras were installed. Oswin set two in the bedrooms, the kitchen, the front room, the entrance and the landing. One was to take normal footage and the other had been adapted to show heat and magnetic abnormalities in the air—ghosts. And he hadn’t had to foot the bill. Both the cameras in the girls’ rooms were rigged to come on only when there was a change in the air and he had been sorely tempted to make sure the normal cameras were permanently out of order.
So, as it is with these things, once everything was nicely set up to visually record the haunting, there was a lull in paranormal activity. Even the housewife ghost refused to come out.
“Isn’t this frustrating!” Oswin growled as he surveyed the scant recordings in Gemma’s diary. “For the first few days there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. Now Beryl lights one of her stink sticks up and the cameras go on, but there’s no ghostly movement at all.”
Gemma was lying on his bed again, tapping a dance routine out on the wall. It was the sort of dance that used plenty of airy-fairy movements on the arms and she incorporated these as best she could.
“So the normal camera’s filming right now?” she asked, sitting up.
Oswin nodded.
“What’s she doing?”
He glanced sulkily at the monitor, before replying, “sitting on the floor shuffling papers.”
Gemma moved to stare at the screens. One was blank and the other showed Beryl settling down to do some studying.
“How can she study all over the floor like that?” Oswin remarked. “You’d think she’d go down to the kitchen,”
“She likes her privacy, like Shrek,” Gemma replied with a giggle.
Oswin felt a pang of guilt.
“Why don’t I go in and see if I can see anything?” Gemma asked. “I’ll say I’m making coffee and does she want some?”
“Okay, go on then!”
When Gemma returned moments later, it was to say she had seen nothing unusual.
“They know we’re watching them,” Oswin said. “Ghosts do this to you every time. They just won’t be captured on film.”
“Well, if the ghosts are hiding away from the cameras, why don’t we just switch them off for a few days? That way we might entice some sort of appearance.”
With a nod, Oswin decided to do just that.
* * * *
Someone else was very aware of the cameras. Griswold would come home, throw his briefcase and jacket in a slothful heap in the entrance, only to remember the cameras and return to hang his jacket and put his case away diligently. Or when he was scoffing down his TV supper, he would suddenly remember his manners and sit up straight and eat more slowly. He was so embarrassed when he fell asleep in his chair, drooling a little as he snored, that he rushed up to Oswin’s room to demand that he remove that footage immediately.
“Oh…er…I…er…” Oswin spluttered, thinking fast. “I switched it off when you came in the room. I thought…”
“Good lad!” Griswold cried. “No need
to include me in it, eh? By the way, have you got any interesting stuff on the girls yet?”
“Sorry, no. Just Beryl burning her incense while studying a few times. Definitely nothing to worry about.”
“Hmm.” Griswold was still unconvinced. “Well, keep filming for another week or so. Then I’ll have a look at your most interesting shots.”
“Right,” Oswin replied casually, but when Griswold left his room, he rubbed his forehead vigorously. Darn! He hadn’t thought of that—having to produce videos! Still it was easily solved.
He set the cameras to film breakfast time—such as it was—a bit of afternoon time in the front room and in the hall and landing, for reality’s sake. And a snippet of time in the girls’ rooms, when he least expected them to be dressing or picking their noses. The next thing was—should he warn them? He decided that in order to get natural behavior from them, it would be best not to say anything. It was bad enough having Griswold minding his Ps and Qs in an exaggerated way. All that straight backed posture made him look like he had a spinal injury. It was a wonder Beryl hadn’t picked up on his behavior and asked questions.
Needless to say, nothing interesting happened—either in terms of paranormal activity, or anything worthwhile to send in to You’ve Been Framed. Oswin was beginning to loose hope. Gemma’s ghost diary was certainly not scientific enough to be used for his project alone. His teacher would probably think it was a fabrication. Unless his detecting equipment got enough testing, his project was doomed to failure. He was now using his weekends at home to work on a more earthly-based project—a working, mechanical pair of grasshopper legs. Although he had hardly any time left to do it justice and get a good mark, at least he would have something concrete to hand in. He could feel a ‘long talk’ with his parents looming and was beginning to spend more time thinking about his grasshopper leg project than his ghost hunt. In fact, he had quite forgotten about the cameras waiting to film the resident ghosts when the next event finally happened.
They were, strangely enough, all at the kitchen table at the same time. It was Saturday morning and Oswin was waiting for his parents to collect him. Griswold had just come in from fetching his paper, bringing hot croissants from the bakery and this had lured everyone to the kitchen. The girls were still in their gowns but Oswin was fully dressed, eager to get home to work on his new project. At the sound of a passing car he turned to look through the kitchen doorway and down the short passage to the front door.
“Is your mother coming this morning, then?” Griswold asked.
Oswin nodded and said, “She’s not working today, so I asked her to come as soon as she could.”
“I’ll tell her to stop by for dinner just as soon as Beryl is over this incense burning faze,” Griswold said, giving her a pointed stare. “We don’t want your parents to think this is a Sixties, hippie commune we live in.”
Beryl spluttered, struggling to swallow a mouthful of pastry and jam. “I beg your pardon! Excuse my precocity, but I’ll have you know, Father, that I burn incense sticks as part of an aromatherapy program. Aromatherapy is used to enhance one’s sense of well-being and to either relax, or invigorate one...”
“I was only pointing out that it looks…”
“Excuse me,” Beryl pushed her way back into the speakers chair with studied ease. “Let me finish what I am saying, before you interrupt me, please. It’s only fair!”
“But…”
“I am trying to improve my vitality levels to aid me in the forthcoming exams,” she continued. “This has nothing to do with the nineteen sixties drug culture—something I am sure you were involved in, in some level or the other. I, however, am not that way inclined, thank you very much! I am simply trying to do well in my exams. For it is not only gifted pupils that put effort into their schooling, but it is also the more average scholar who tries hard—if not harder—than those labelled talented. Now, in my extreme efforts—which obviously go unappreciated—to do well in my exams and get as good a mark as I can and at the same time to continue unabated in my nurturing role as Mother of the House, I feel I should be allowed to employ natural and harmless methods of enhancing my efforts. I take great offence at your suspicious insinuations…”
By now, Griswold and Oswin had glazed over and were staring dismally into middle space and Gemma had shut her eyes in an effort to escape the intense volley of defence from Beryl. Only the salt cellar tumbling over jolted everyone back to the here and now.
“Oh, look what you’ve done,” Griswold snapped, as the tall and unstable container clattered onto a plate. “Be careful, Beryl!”
The salt cellar had crashed down onto Beryl’s marmalade croissant and somehow the plug at the back came out. Now a heap of salt lay accusingly amongst the breakfast clutter, and the holes of the salt cellar were blocked up by a blob of marmalade.
“I never touched the darn thing!” Beryl cried indignantly. “I was nowhere near it.”
Oswin pricked his ears up at once. He glanced at the clock, at Beryl and the toppled salt cellar, back at the clock, and gave Gemma a pointed look. She shrugged.
At first, Beryl and Griswold were too busy arguing to notice this interaction.
“I was not waving my arms about!” Beryl declared. “Nothing of the sort!”
“Now, Beryl…” Griswold tried to get a word in edgeways, but she cut him off with all the efficiency of a Wilkinson’s sword.
“I may have gesticulated what I was saying, but I had no choice! I was speaking in defence against unfair accusations, which made me slightly emotional, but…let me finish!…but I was not waving my arms about wildly. I’ve been having marmalade…excuse me Father, don’t look away! I am going to finish what I have to say…I’ve been eating marmalade and croissants, so why would I have the salt cellar handy? It was, you must admit in all fairness, not that close…Oswin, what are you doing?”
Oswin was trying to measure the position the salt cellar was in before it toppled and the direction in which it fell, in order to get a good idea of where the force that pushed it over came from. He had his own theories about who—or what—was responsible for knocking it over.
“We just want to clear up the spilt salt,” Gemma said peaceably.
“I want Beryl to do that!” Griswold snapped, “as she was the one…”
“How dare you! I have spent ages and ages calmly putting my defence forward and you don’t even acknowledge the fact that I have!” Losing her courtroom calm, Beryl took to thumping the table and yelling, “It’s all because I have a relationship with someone from the performing arts block!”
“Enough!” Griswold roared.
Everyone jumped. Beryl, who had begun to scrape back her chair in order to make a dramatic and tearful exit as she spoke, froze, sitting still on her chair, a hand to her mouth, her chair positioned away from the table. All was still and silent for a moment. That’s when they heard it.
Chapter Sixteen
They all heard someone at the door. The shuffle, stamp and click that proceeds the chink of keys or the ring of the bell. Just a little noise—a routine lasting little more than a second—they had all heard often enough to recognise instantly. It was a sound that could drift down the hall and easily be heard in the kitchen-diner if the doors were open, and if everyone in the room were being particularly quiet. Had it occurred a moment earlier, they would have been none the wiser. But they all heard the sound and calmed down instantly to receive their guest.
Griswold shut his eyes. “That would be your mum, Oswin. Let her in,” he said quietly.
Oswin went at once and quickly, barely noticing a flutter of movement in the front room doorway as he passed. But as he got to the front door, opening it, he saw no one was there. He realized with a start the doorbell had not rung yet. It should have rung before he’d left the kitchen diner—as he pushed his chair back, even. Only then did he take in th
e movement he had seen out of the corner of his eye by the front room door. He rushed back, heart racing, to that door. All was lifeless. He crept into the room, thinking Is it an intruder? No. Nothing. There was nobody there at all.
“Isn’t she come yet?” The question rang clear and suddenly through the air.
Oswin gasped with fright as he spun around. “Gosh, Gemma, you didn’t half give me a start!” he whispered.
She stared at him for a moment then her eyes scanned the room.
“Quick—where’s the ghost meter?” Oswin said. “Oh, why did I stop carrying it around with me? Oh, where did I put it?”
At this point Griswold came into the room. “Where is she, then?” he asked.
“No. It’s no one,” Oswin replied. “It must have been…our imagination.”
“Well, never mind, boy,” Griswold said kindly, as he turned to go back to the kitchen. “She’ll be along soon. Any minute now.”
Recalling that his meter was on his desk, Oswin made for the stairs. He only vaguely heard the doorbell ring as he fumbled amongst various papers and paraphernalia. As he tore back down, taking the stairs two at a time, his mother, Martha, opened her arms to greet him.
“My!” she gasped, “I hope you haven’t been missing home that much!”
“He seems very happy here, Martha,” Griswold insisted, eyeing them warily.
Wheeeeeeee…click…click…click…pop! went the gun as Oswin, still in his mother’s embrace, fired it at the front door.
“Oh!” She jumped and involuntarily let him go. He spun round and bounded to the front room door and fired. Wheeeeeeee…click…click…click…pop!
“Full count!” he chuckled and strode to the kitchen-diner and Gemma nodded, scribbling furiously in her diary.
Griswold grinned helplessly at Martha. “Er…see? Happy as a lark, he’s been. I thought his phase of playing with that gun was over, but apparently not! Perhaps he’s brought it out to show you. I believe he built it himself!”