Storm

by Nicola Skinner

  The only thing that felt vivid, unavoidable and impossible to ignore, was the crowds.

  Clogging up the narrow corridors and staircase, standing in line for the loo, shuffling around the kitchen and sitting room. Tired grown-ups with their thousand-yard stares, like wounded soldiers waiting to be told where to go next, occasionally rolling their eyes at each other when their children weren’t looking.

  They didn’t just take over the house. They stuffed themselves up my ears, into my brain. I heard everything. Conversations about the shocking cost of the car park, how their children were driving them up the wall and they still had four more weeks of holiday to go. I heard about family feuds and nasty divorces, got stuck in the middle of endless sibling squabbles. Children my age saying, ‘Remind me why we’re here again’, and ‘What is that horrible damp smell?’ and ‘I don’t want to learn local history. I want to eat my crisps instead’.

  When I closed my eyes, I saw them, and no one else. When they left the house, I still heard their voices inside my head.

  Had Mum and Dad also counted down the days till we returned to school, just like these parents did? Had they rolled their eyes at each other over our heads too?

  I started to see things through the eyes of the tourists, not mine. Our rooms were crooked. Mum did have a bit of a potbelly. Dad hadn’t been a brilliant artist. Perhaps he’d been a … failure? Perhaps we’d been a joke?

  I remembered what Jill had said. ‘You won’t rot. But your memories might.’

  I wanted to take back control.

  So I think what happened next was totally and completely understandable.

  WHEN IT CAME to crowds inside the house, rainy days made them ten times worse. At the slightest drizzle, people would cram into the cottage, filling the rooms with the smell of wet clothes and disappointment. They made the house feel even smaller, even darker. On days like that, Sea View felt like an unexploded water balloon, quivering with unspilt energy.

  I’d spent most of the morning in what used to be my bedroom, curled up on top of a flowery duvet cover I’d never have chosen for myself, while children said pitying things like ‘Did they really not have multiplayer console VR micro-box pixel lagoon skins in their rooms?’ before asking ‘Where next?’

  I could have gone anywhere else in the house. Could have sat on top of Birdie’s bed. Taken refuge under the kitchen table for a few hours. I could have sat, undisturbed, in a flower bed outside. If I had, maybe things would have been different.

  But I went to Mum’s study instead, and it had happened there.

  It was crowded. Medow, the shyest and most timid of the Room Sentries, was there, nervously fiddling with one of her experimental necklaces.

  Inside the room were also two giggling teenagers, an older man holding a steaming cup of CuppaGrubba and a woman whose twin boys were climbing on to Mum’s desk.

  To top it all off, Mum’s hologram was also crammed inside, saying repeatedly, ‘Have you got any questions about working mothers in the twenty-first century and how I balanced work and parenting?’

  Whenever she said this, however, the man would just roll his eyes and take another gulp of his foul-smelling bug drink and the teenagers would giggle and say things like: ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’

  And suddenly, out of nowhere, an old pulse began to beat inside me. Not a heartbeat, obviously, but a familiar buzzing feeling, something I’d not felt for a while. I glared at my unwelcome companions and that pulse got stronger. They were literally using Mum’s study as a waiting room until the rain eased off. Her life – her career – was nothing more than a jokey stopgap where they could pass the time and drink nasty grub coffee until lunch. Not one of them was doing what Olivine called ‘engaging and learning from the stories of our past’.

  Well, maybe the two young boys were. If running through Mum’s hologram and shrieking with laughter as if she was a garden sprinkler was ‘learning from the stories of the past’. But, with that feeling of immense generosity that often accompanies blinding flashes of wisdom, I suddenly knew there was no point in blaming these idiots. It wasn’t their fault they couldn’t see how special that study was. Because it was wrong.

  For starters, it was way too orderly. Back when Mum had been alive, this room had been an absolute mess, only a couple of months away from a guest appearance on one of those How Clean Is Your House? programmes. There would always be at least fifteen cups of half-drunk coffee on the go, teetering mounds of paperwork, plates with half-eaten snacks on, loads of half-used coral lipsticks lying around – she wasn’t a ‘tidy-as-you-go’ kind of person at all.

  Now though there was none of that. No wonder the tourists didn’t feel anything in there. It was nothing like her. It wasn’t true to life. It was devoid of life. All it had now was a laminated sign on her desk which said: Like typical working mothers in the early twenty-first century, Rachel Ripley attempted to hold down a job as she worked from home. In this cramped spot, Rachel had a desk, laptop, filing cabinet and phone, which would have met all her working needs at the time, primitive though these basic tools may seem to us now.

  I didn’t understand what all of that meant, but I knew one thing. I did not like Mum being called primitive. Or typical. She wasn’t typical. She was brilliant. And she’d been mine.

  ‘Mummy? Time to swipe. There’s nothing good to see here,’ said one of the boys, who had now tired of running through Mum’s hologram.

  ‘I’ll give you something to see.’ My voice sounded rusty and tangled, like a bunch of broken Christmas lights stuck in an attic for too long.

  No one paid me any attention.

  I tried again.

  ‘I said,

  This time, the words came out more easily. It felt good, to speak aloud in my own home. When did I last do that?

  I’d forgotten how easily I could raise my voice when I was in the mood. How nice it was to speak aloud and hear the crackle and snap in my voice.

  I stepped into the study. It felt like a beige sterile box. No wonder the boys were bored. No wonder they all were. The place just needed some atmosphere, that was all. It needed to be messed up a bit.

  The thought blew into my brain as easily as a leaf through a door. My hands curled into fists.

  This is usually the time, I thought, flexing my fingers experimentally, that Mum or Dad would tell me to stop and go away and work on my feelings until I’d calmed down.

  But they’re not here, are they?

  MY LIMBS ACHED and fizzed, as if I’d been sitting on them for a long time and they wanted to come back to life.

  Okay, time to concentrate, Frankie. First things first. What’s this room missing? What were Mum’s little touches?

  Well, that’s easy. Paper. Mum always had loads, everywhere. Remember? Piles and piles of it. All in a mess.

  A slight movement in the corner caught my eye. It was Medow, shifting from one foot to the other. Clutched to her chest was a bundle of those Treasure Trail fun sheets in her arms, the ones she always tried to give away to the younger children so they could ‘engage with the stories of the past’ and not ‘just rush around the cottage saying it was bor-ing’.

  They’ll do.

  Without thinking too much about it, I reached out and made a grab for them with my fingers. And then something incredible happened.

  I touched them.

  Even more miraculously, I pulled them out of her hands.

  I didn’t know who was more surprised – me, for having picked up something successfully for the first time since the twenty-first century, or Medow, who gasped in confusion.

  I felt a pang of remorse – I didn’t want to frighten her – but at the same time, these people needed to see what Mum’s room – what our life – had really been like. I snatched another handful from her trembling arms. To my delight, the second attempt was even easier than the first, and the paper came cleanly out of her embrace. She practically offered them up, in fact, with a small whimper, which I took to mean ‘Please, help y
ourself!’

  What’s happening? I can do things again!

  Elated, I shook the Treasure Trails about, like a raffle winner holding up her winning ticket. As the trail leaflets danced about in the air, Medow staggered backwards, one of the teenagers fainted and the other was sick on the floor. The two little boys whimpered.

  ‘Not so bored now, are you?’ I said, throwing the paper around the room, clapping and whooping as it landed in heaps on the desk and carpet. Mum’s study looked better already.

  The old man looked concerned, coffee cup slack in his hand. ‘What’s happening?’ he said.

  ‘I’ll tell you what’s happening,’ I said, throwing the paper up in the air as giddily as an aunt throwing confetti at a wedding. ‘A historical re-enaction. Never mind those holograms, this is the real authentic Ripley experience. You lucky people!’

  And I chucked another bundle of Treasure Trails into the air to celebrate. Unfortunately they hit the ceiling light, which made the lampshade swing violently about and throw eerie shadows around the room.

  The teenager who hadn’t fainted fled the room.

  Shakily, Medow began to punch some buttons on her walkie-talkie.

  The two boys and their mother were moving, very slowly, in a huddle towards the door.

  ‘Don’t go!’ I yelled. ‘I’m just getting started!’

  I ran to the door and grabbed its handle, shrieking with joy at the actual feel of it in my hand. Then I slammed the door shut with a satisfying bang, pulled the key out of the lock and threw it to the ground.

  ‘There – now you have to stay. I’ve got so much more to show you!’

  Everyone in the room shrieked too, although they didn’t sound quite as joyful as me, and it looked as if one of the boys might have had an accident in his trousers, and I was sorry about that, but in all fairness, I was doing them a favour. If they left now, they’d miss the best bit.

  Both boys started to cry.

  I rolled my eyes. Talk about gratitude. This was going to be the learning experience of a lifetime, and they didn’t even know how to enjoy it? Why, only a few seconds ago, one of them had been complaining there hadn’t been enough to see!

  ‘You’re welcome,’ I said, then I went back to work.

  A short while later, I surveyed the room, panting but elated. Everything looks so much better now.

  This is what I’d done:

  a. Yanked the curtains back. They should never have been closed in the first place – Mum had always liked to look out at the garden.

  b. Ripped the blinds away from the window frame. I felt bad when I realised I’d broken them, but if you asked me it was a price worth paying – the study was lighter, which was how it had always been, back when we were alive.

  c. Opened the window to let in some fresh air. Well, I say ‘opened’. When I’d realised it was bolted shut, I’d solved that problem creatively by throwing the laptop through the window, which had smashed almost all of the window completely. This was admittedly unfortunate. Still, now there was a nice summer breeze drifting in past the jagged stumps of glass. Mum would have liked that – she loved working with the window open. Said she could hear the blackbirds better that way.

  d. But the icing on the cake was the coffee. I’d borrowed the old man’s cup of CuppaGrubba by easing it gently out of his hands. Then I’d flung it all around the paperwork and desk for that authentic coffee-stained vibe Mum always went for. I might have accidentally thrown some on the tourists as well, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

  After regarding the room appraisingly, I gave a satisfied sigh. It wasn’t perfect, and maybe it could do with slightly less broken glass, vomit on the carpet and coffee dripping down the walls, but it was so much closer to what home had been like. Fresh air, a view, some of that healthy scruffiness you only find in proper family homes … I was quite proud of it, actually.

  And I felt amazing too. Happier and less freezing, for one thing. Excitement ran through me, warming and thrilling my corpse. It had been so brilliant to be able to touch stuff again, to make things happen. Honestly, although I was dead, I’d never felt so alive.

  If only the same could be said for the others. They were taking the restoration quite badly. Instead of clapping in admiration, they were either wailing softly or cowering in a corner.

  Medow, who had been silently pressing an emergency button on the wall for a while, sobbed with relief as Chrix forced the door open. The tourists ran out, sobbing too.

  Like an athlete at the end of a marathon, I started to shake and tremble all over. I sank to the floor, exhausted and spent.

  As Chrix ushered a stumbling Medow out of the room, saying, ‘It’s all right – you’re safe now’ soothingly, my head fell back against the wall.

  There was a subtle movement by the door. Through a fog of tiredness, I thought I saw a glimpse of someone, pale and solemn, shaking their head at me from just beyond the doorway. But when I squinted into the shadows to check, there was no one there.

  A FEW MOMENTS later, Chrix, Olivine and Skiffler came bustling into the study. They carried mops and buckets and cleaning products. No sign of Medow – she was probably breathing into a paper bag somewhere.

  Instead of clapping their hands with delight at my handiwork, turning to each other and saying, ‘What a wonderful display of truth this is. Let’s leave it untouched forever,’ Chrix and his colleagues swept up the glass, mopped up the coffee, sponged at the puke, and taped cardboard over the broken window. Philistines.

  And as they tidied, I heard the same word whispered over and over.

  ‘Poltergeist.’

  Poltergeist.

  I glared at them, whispering and sweeping so fussily, and my jaw clenched. I’d gone to all that effort to show them proper authenticity, and now they were scrubbing it away?

  ‘Stop it,’ I snapped from the carpet, not tired all of a sudden. ‘Don’t touch it. Leave it exactly like that, please.’

  But they didn’t hear me, and carried on. So I decided to use the only language that worked. I went and rearranged the study again.

  And this time, my reasons seemed to flex and change shape. It was more out of anger, if I was honest, less about authenticity. I did it because I was – ah, finally, the relief of feeling something properly again! – furious. Furious at being contained and trapped and ignored and labelled and dismissed and pitied and misunderstood. I was sick of being alone and abandoned. I was mad I’d never got on that stupid bus, and angry they’d never come back, and cross that some weird death guardian in huge glasses had told me I might have to do something in order to ever see my family again, but hadn’t said anything useful about what that was.

  As I smashed and threw and ripped, somewhere inside me a delighted little voice said: There’s no one telling me not to. For the first time ever. No disappointed faces. No one yanking me back on a leash or talking about energy fields. It was almost a blessing. Finally, I’d found something good about being dead! I could lose my temper and no one could stop me! I was angry and it felt amazing and I was going to properly explore it, for once, without being told to stop just as I was getting going.

  Once I’d done the study again, I didn’t feel quite as exhausted as I had the last time. In fact, I even had a bit of energy left over, so I trashed the kitchen too. Then my bedroom. And Birdie’s. And the upstairs bathroom.

  Every now and again, I’d stop, panting, and stare at my hands wonderingly. Now I knew what made them work again. I’d worked it out. Anger made me powerful.

  And really, I had quite a lot to be angry about. All that time of being ignored, mocked, and crowded out of what used to be our home, watching helplessly as my safe spaces got smaller and smaller. Hearing our real stories get distorted by holograms, and listening to people feeling sorry for us just because we didn’t have lagoon-tech banana skins or whatever gadgets they had that they thought were indispensable. Listen, sunshine, you stick around for a century, then we’ll talk abou
t indispensable, all right?

  Oh, I can’t tell you how incredibly fantastic it was to finally lose my temper, all of it, all at once! It was like tipping an entire bag of sweets into my mouth in one go, after only ever being allowed to eat them one by one before. It felt delicious, and a little bit dangerous, and way too much fun to stop. So I did it all afternoon.

  Occasionally, when I was in the middle of a particularlylaboriousbitofhealthyemotional expression – ripping a blanket in half, say, or throwing a chair down the staircase – I’d hesitate suddenly, worried about the extent of my new-found abilities.

  What if I ran out halfway through? Would I wind down, like a clock without a battery? Would everything go back to how it had been before: me not being able to do anything?

  But then, in a moment of dazzling clarity, I realised that there was no need for my fury to run out. All I had to do was look around. I could keep my anger going as long as I wanted to. It was like a rechargeable battery.

  I may have gone over the top by the end. I took a sudden dislike to the sink in the upstairs bathroom. I know it sounds weird now but trust me. It was maddening. It was the wrong colour, for a start. And – oh, who cares what the reason was.

  It was there. And so was I. And I had a new-found superpower, and I was going to use it.

  With the help ofthe emergency hammer conveniently hanging nearby, and with some gratifyingly loud smashing sounds, I managed to make the entire sink come completely away from the wall. As the torrent of water began to stream out of the bathroom and down the staircase, I watched it happen with a shiver of delighted satisfaction. It had been fun.

  I contemplated my work. The water cascaded down the staircase, the lightshades hung broken from their fixtures, and there were piles of torn bed linen lying in strips on the floor next to broken wardrobe doors and dented walls. And do you know the best bit of all?

  I’d played and played, and no one would be able to get me to tidy up.

  Later, with all the tourists fled or evacuated, I swaggered around the empty rooms, enjoying my new sensations of power and strength. I felt brilliant. Like a crisp duvet pulled tight across a bed, all fresh and wholesome. Washed clean.