Oswin's Project

by Fiona Law

  Grabbing his Ghost-O-Meter he raced downstairs, pausing in the hallway only long enough to wrench a bouquet of flowers from its vase and carried the vessel of water through to the front room.

  Upon entering it, he pulled the trigger of his Ghost-O-Meter and tossed the contents of vase clumsily at the tree. There was less water than needed to douse the flames devouring the tree, but more than enough to kill the fire of passion raging within the couple on the settee, for the water landed more on Beryl and Raj than on the tree and the splash was coupled with the “Wheeeeeeee…click…click…click…pop!” of the meter. Beryl was too shocked to protest for a moment.

  As Raj and Beryl blinked the water from their eyes, coughing and spluttering as their senses returned to dull reality, they were awakened to the crisis at hand. With Oswin’s help, they sort of managed to put the burning tree out. Raj kept crying out, “Smother it, don’t douse it! Water’s bad on electric fires!”

  Beryl danced about, her arms in the air as she yelled, “My tree! My tree!” She looked like a priestess ceremoniously evoking a god.

  The fire alarm went off, drowning their cries and adding to the sense of confusion as they scrambled for a something with which to smother the flames. With every second they took, the fire increased in size and ferocity. They had to use the settee cushions to smother it and this ruined both the tree and the lounge suite.

  They just about got the fire put out when the fire brigade arrived, and in its wake came Griswold and Gemma, who was still green from the party. They all had to go and stand on the front lawn, while the fire brigade were busy in the house. Neighbors came out and stood on their doorsteps, staring openly at the family. Beryl and Raj, particularly, shivered in the night air. The party glared at one another in the darkness, standing still in their varying degrees of shock and bewilderment, as the fire brigade moved efficiently around them. One or two of the heroic men paused long enough to cast astonished looks at Gemma. She didn’t seem to notice, although Griswold coughed and stared at his feet each time.

  “Did you set the tree on fire, Oswin?” Beryl asked after some time. She had procured a blanket, which she’d wrapped around her like an oversized dressing gown.

  “No!” Oswin snapped.

  “Only it seemed perfectly all right to me. One moment it was fine, the next moment, you were shooting it with your ray gun and throwing water over Raj and I. I have my suspicions about all this, you know! Those lights were not faulty. There was no way they would have burst into flames on their own.”

  “But…”

  “Beryl!” Griswold said, “That’s a terrible thing to say. The boy…”

  “Hear me out now, Father! I’m not saying he tried to burn the house down.” At these words she turned patronizingly to Oswin. “You know that’s not what I was saying. I know you wouldn’t do a thing as naughty as that. However, what I think is that it’s a practical joke gone wrong. I think you got the toy ray gun to actually work. And you shot at my Christmas tree.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” Griswold said. “There’s no such thing as a ray gun!”

  Bristling, Beryl stood her ground. “Let me have my say! I’ve had a traumatic evening, having to watch my tree and all that hard work of six and a quarter hours of decorating it, go up in flames and I’m having trouble coping with it all…”

  “I’d say,” Oswin muttered.

  Gemma caught his eye and giggled.

  “Stop interrupting me,” Beryl demanded angrily. “I’m going to finish what I’ve got to say, whether you like it or not! I mean, Father, that Oswin is a gifted child there’s no doubt. You do know you’re especially clever, don’t you Oswin?”

  Oswin glared at her.

  “Well, you know how fond of the gun he is, Father!” Beryl said, before turning upon Oswin again. “You can’t deny it, Oswin, we’ve all been shot by you with your toy ray gun. I of course, have born the brunt of your ray gun assaults, although I can’t think why. But what I’m saying is that I believe you have the capability to build something such as a real working ray gun…”

  At this Raj and Oswin and Gemma broke into a fit of giggles.

  Griswold rolled his eyes and gave a grunt of mirthless laughter. “There is no such thing as a ray gun, Beryl. That’s Seventies science fiction gobbledygook! You’ll probably find the fire’s all down to faulty wiring.”

  “There was nothing the matter with my Christmas tree lights! Oswin came in and set fire to the tree with a homemade plasma energy torpedo burst from the gun he carries about with him all the time.”

  “Plasma energy?” Griswold asked, looking a tad doubtful.

  “Yes! This fire’s caused by plasma energy bursts!” Beryl declared loudly. “You should be saying how grateful you are that he didn’t aim his weapon at me, Father, like he usually does! It would be me—the Mother Figure of this household—that had burst into flames. And how would you like that, Father? Eh? With no one to cook and clean for you and to take care of little Gemma?”

  Griswold tugged at his moustache. “You’ve not been experimenting with plasma energy, have you, boy?” he asked.

  “No!” said Oswin. “That’s Nineties science fiction gobbledygook.”

  Their noisy debate was cut short by the approach of the fire chief and he told them it was down to faulty Christmas lights.

  “Never had a Christmas tree fire this early in the year,” he remarked. “And all your cameras and some of your wall sockets have shorted out. Better get someone in to look at the house’s wiring.”

  “Nonsense!” Beryl argued. “I’m sorry, but that’s a lazy explanation! You see a burnt up Christmas tree and you conclude, without an investigation, that it’s faulty fairy lights—how unimaginative! Well, I’ll have you know, Inspector Fire Chief, that those lights were not on at the time that the fire occurred.”

  “I think you’ll find they were, Miss,” the man replied, undaunted. “Most of these fires occur through lights being put on and forgotten—left unattended.”

  “No! This one wasn’t. I have a witness. Raj and I were both in the front room at the time of the fire and I think you’ll find that he’ll back me up when I say the lights were very definitely off.”

  “But Baby mine,” Raj blurted innocently, “you must be in shock. Don’t you remember? You’d put them on to show me how beautiful…”

  “You put the lights on already?” Griswold gasped. “You were allowed to put the tree up on the sole condition that you wait…”

  “Raj! How could you? That is extreme unfaithfulness, that is! If those lights were on—and I’m not saying they were, because I don’t remember them being on—but if they were on, it was because Raj insisted on seeing them. In fact, he made me put them on. That’s twice in one evening, Raj, that you have not had my best interests at heart.” Beryl sniffed luxuriously, wiping her nose on the blanket, and implored shakily. “Oh, I’m so hurt! No one believes me, and I know what happened!”

  Raj gasped. “I think she’s lost it a bit! Honestly Griswol...Mister MacPherson, I think it’s the shock of it all. She doesn’t mean it.” He asked the fireman if they could go back into the house. “Beryl needs to lie down, and have some strong tea,” he said. “She’s lost her mind, she’s not well.”

  “She’s done enough lying already,” Griswold muttered, red in the face.

  “Yes, you can go back in,” the fireman assured them. “You seem to have most of your electricity working but some of your downstairs sockets have gone. And all those cameras—even the ones upstairs—are all shot. Some of their wires have melted. You’re lucky the whole place didn’t go up in a show of sparks. I strongly advise you to get the wiring thoroughly checked. You know how these old houses can be!”

  Raj was keen to carry the ailing Beryl up to bed, but she wouldn’t let him touch her.

  “No! I’m sorry,” she insisted f
orcibly, tears brimming angrily. “I can’t have you touch me! After such a betrayal, such blatant disloyalty, I couldn’t have you come near me again. I could never trust you!”

  She huffed up to her bedroom unattended and slammed the door.

  “Let me go after her,” Raj said. “Let me explain.”

  “Little point in that…er…Raj. She’ll not hear you. Not in that state,” Griswold said. He surveyed the he front room. “Crikey, look at this mess!”

  “The tree!” Raj groaned. “Beryl will be crushed when she sees it! It’ll wipe her out!”

  “Heavens, boy, you’re right!” Griswold breathed. There was a hollow look in his face. “We’d better get it out of here, quick!”

  “But not the whole thing, surely? I think some ornaments can be saved!”

  Griswold shook his head. “The whole bloody lot, boy…er…Raj.” Then he rubbed his hands and adopted a brisker pose. “Oswin, you get the dustpan! And a damp cloth. Raj, you and I get this lot packed in the trailer, ready for the dump. The settee may as well go too. Gemma…” He gazed dismally at Gemma. “You look like a bleeding Muppet—get that green paint off your face and go straight to bed! You’ve got school in the morning.”

  Oswin sneaked a couple of readings with his ‘ray gun’ while sweeping and mopping up, although he had missed the crucial period.

  “Still,” he muttered to himself, “it’s obviously falling from a peak.”

  Griswold and Raj caught him with the meter in his hands.

  “Oswin! For Pity’s Sake! Put that gun away, it’s caused enough trouble for one night!” Griswold barked. “As soon as you’re finished it’s off to bed with you too! It’s getting late. Cor, what a night!” He rubbed a weary hand over his face.

  Raj asked, “Please, Mister MacPherson, can I try to speak to Beryl?”

  “Eh? Oh, all right, then, if she’ll let you.”

  Raj ran up the stairs and begged Beryl to listen to him, but his efforts were to no avail. He tapped on Beryl’s door for ten minutes, calling her in his soft voice while Griswold watched from the landing.

  “You betrayed me, you Judas, I’m too upset to discuss this any further,” Beryl sobbed from her bed at last.

  Raj frowned. “No, it’s me, Raj! Open the door, I want to talk to you!”

  But she wouldn’t; she complained in loud wail, “I’ve been stabbed in the back by Brutus! That’s what!”

  “I am not a brute,” Raj protested. “Oh, please let me talk to you! Let me comfort you!”

  But he could not get her to open the door.

  Eventually Griswold intervened. “I think you’d better go, son. There’s nothing you can do now,” he said. And so Raj went, with his head down and his shoulders drooping.

  Oswin, in contrast, was positively perky. Griswold was annoyed to see Gemma loitering in the boy’s room in her Pyjamas and gown, brushing her long, loose hair.

  “Gemma! What are you doing? That’s enticing to men, that is!”

  “What?” blinked Gemma. Her eyes were red and she still had a green smudge by her left ear.

  “Eh?” Oswin muttered, barely looking from his monitor. “Look at this, Uncle! I’ve caught the exact moment the fire started on screen.”

  “Did you indeed, son? Well, now let’s see this,” Griswold replied, rubbing his hands together.

  Chapter Nineteen

  An hour or so later, after intense discussion and amazing revelations, Griswold was congratulating himself on being able to finally get to bed, when, as he passed Beryl’s door, he heard her still crying.

  “Aw, come on, Beryl,” he said, peeping in. “You’re not still upset are you?”

  She lifted her head heavily and gazed vaguely towards him. Her eyes were barely visible in her face—red and swollen with crying. Her hair was dishevelled and her clothes crumpled. And as she moaned and began to rock herself, she looked like a hideous, misshapen beast.

  “Good gracious, girl! What’s happened to you!” Griswold cried and this set her off in a fresh bout of sobs. He fussed over her as she lay on her bed moaning and crying inconsolably, until, in the early hours of the morning, he rang up and persuaded their family doctor to come out and look at her.

  The doctor was very abrupt and injected her as roughly as he could with a tranquilliser. Beryl was horrified, as she thought she should have been admitted into hospital with a nervous break down, and told him so angrily.

  “I shall file a complaint! Why haven’t you rushed me to casualty, yet? My head is about to burst, it’s so swollen—I can feel it—it’s the size of a melon! No one appreciates that I am under enormous stress here, with added burdens…” And—pop!—she fell asleep. The doctor muttered irritably under his breath as he stomped back home to bed.

  * * * *

  The next morning, the others put off facing Beryl with unspoken bliss. It was peaceful to the point of euphoria after the scenes of the previous night, as they set about the final tasks of clearing up. Griswold took time off work to catch up on his sleep and to make trips to the dump. Gemma and Oswin flipped through the Yellow Pages over a bowl of cornflakes, looking for an electrician, before seeing themselves, unhindered, off to school while Beryl slept like a monstrous baby. Bliss!

  She had to awake at some point. As soon as she regained her strength, she called a family meeting in the front room. Her black nail varnish and skull ring were gone. Instead she wore her hair pinned up into a tight, efficient bun and was sporting a pair of horn rimmed glasses. Oswin had serious doubts as to whether their lenses were more than plain glass. Beryl stood beside one of the new settee’s arms and held a clipboard and a pen.

  “We need to talk about banning homemade battery operated toys,” Beryl said. “As has been demonstrated to us, they can be lethal.” She gave Oswin a pointed stare. “We could have burnt to our deaths. Not to mention the tree. I put six and a quarter hours of effort into decorating it. I loved that tree like a child. Yes, that’s actually how it was for me. And now it’s… Well, I’m over the worst of my loss, but I can assure you, I will always bear the scars.”

  “We’re sorry the tree burnt down,” Gemma said. “But Oswin has something terrific to show you.”

  “Excuse me! I beg your pardon! But I don’t want to see Oswin’s latest inventions. I don’t know if you can understand that, Gemma, but it is a sore point for me at the moment. I lost my Christmas tree and my boyfriend, who happened to be the best one I’ve ever had. Until, that is, that moment of betrayal, which split my chest open and ripped my heart out…”

  “All right, all right,” Griswold snapped, his moustache bristling irritably, “Beryl, listen to this…”

  “Excuse me! I beg your pardon, Father, but I’m not going to allow anyone to override my feelings on this matter. I want you all to know how I feel about this situation. It’s important to me that you do.”

  “But the point is the fire…”

  “Exactly! That fire has caused me two great losses. One: the pain of losing all that I had put into decorating the tree, and the ornaments, so lovingly collected and kept. Some of those are from the time when Mother, May-She-Rest-in-Peace, was still with us, you know, so that’s an added loss. That’s all gone, wiped out by the fire. And two: the loss of my boyfriend. I’ve not only had to cope with the relationship there coming to an abrupt and painful end, but also with an immense betrayal. He wouldn’t have betrayed me if it weren’t for the fire. And how was the fire caused?”

  “Exactly!” Gemma squeaked, dancing quick little steps on her toes, until Griswold pulled her by the arm to a chair and made her sit down.

  “That’s what we’re trying to tell you. It wasn’t Oswin’s gun,” he said. “That isn’t even a gun. It…”

  “I beg your pardon! Are you saying that the fairy lights were to blame? They were not! I didn’t spend six and a quar
ter hours on that tree just to put in faulty fairy lights. They were of the best quality. I checked each bulb individually. Yes, I am that thorough…Let me finish!…and they were all working fine and the wire had no nicks.”

  “I am glad that you are so sure,” Oswin said, his steady words managing to halt Beryl’s rapid flow. “I hope that you will be willing to sign a testimony to that effect. Because we don’t think it was the lights either.”

  “Then it was…”

  “No. It wasn’t my Ghost-O-Meter. Watch this!”

  Oswin set the film recording on play before Beryl could volley another assault of words at them. The screen on the telly showed a wordless scene of Beryl and Raj snuggling up on the telly, of Beryl switching on the Christmas tree lights, and the inevitable clinch. Beryl’s face paled then flushed a deeper and deeper red. Her mouth gaped open and shut a few times before she managed to find her tongue.

  “Oh, hold on a minute! What’s this? A camera? You’ve been filming me?” she demanded. “Did you know it’s illegal to spy on people like that. I’m going to our lawyer. I’m going to sue you if you’ve been secretly filming me.”

  “Wait!” they all cried. “Look!”

  Oswin froze the picture. “See this little white field of energy?” he said, using a pencil to point it out on the screen. “Watch it, now. Plus another one will appear from here. Now watch!…See? They’re both on the tree and…” The first sparks sprayed across the screen and the fire took hold.

  “What are those little white smudges?” Beryl asked.

  “Ghosts,” Griswold replied, “poltergeists.”

  “Or fairies,” Gemma whispered. “Gremlins.”

  “They are the energy fields of two entities. They didn’t show up on the camera themselves, but their energy fields did,” Oswin explained. “See you and Raj? That light haze around you are your energies—sort of like a magnetic field. It’s weaker than these. My theory is that ghosts are all energy field and no body, whereas we are all body and not much energy field.”