Storm

by Nicola Skinner

He lifted his face to mine. ‘Oh, Frankie, do I have to spell it out? Once Dad realised I could see ghosts, he made me hunt them. That’s why you’re here. You’re our latest catch.’

  HE MADE A quick, angry gesture at the room. I stared at the map I’d seen, the mildewed books haphazardly piled up on the shelves.

  ‘Guides to Britain,’ he said quietly. ‘A map showing places of historical interest.’

  He spoke as if the words were thorns in his mouth. ‘Anywhere ghosts might roam. Castles, ancient battle sites, old mines … seaside villages where everyone tragically drowned at the same time …’ He shot me a look. ‘You name it, we’ve raked it.’

  Despite what he was telling me, I couldn’t help but feel a flare of pity for Scanlon. Had he really been dragged to those spooky places looking for dead people? As a six-year-old? When I was six, the only things I’d hunted were Easter eggs.

  Scanlon was on a roll now. His face was lit up in a horrible way, like a lump of radioactive waste inside him had started to glow.

  ‘Oh, you wouldn’t believe the excitement when Crawler found out about Sea View.’ His mouth split open in the gloom and it was the abysmal smile of a boy who hadn’t smiled for a lifetime. ‘I was surprised the caravan didn’t catch fire, the speed he tore down the motorway.’

  He flapped another arm at the shelves. ‘At the beginning, he tried hunting traps. Muzzles. Not very effective. Too slow. Slid off them. Then he built his machine. The Suck ’Em and Press ’Em. Works every time. Been doing it for years. Perfecting our technique.’ His lips curled around the last word.

  ‘I’m the bait,’ he said finally. ‘I lure them. That’s what that stupid colourful top is for. It’s meant to draw attention to me. Works with young children …’ he closed his eyes for a moment, ‘really well. They love the colours. It reassures them. There’s a little girl in one of the cans up there …’ His voice faltered. ‘She loved it the most.’

  He swiped roughly at his nose. ‘And Crawler – well, you saw his clothes, that nervous blink? It’s fake. Those pink cheeks? He uses blusher. It’s all calculated, all part of the trap.’

  I wanted to pull his vile story out of my ears and throw it away like a tapeworm, but there was nothing to do except listen.

  ‘He’s the mastermind,’ he went on. ‘He does the research, locates the sites. He can’t see ghosts, so he uses me to make friends with them and reel them in. Then – well, you know the rest.’ Scanlon closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Mum never came back. Not once she saw what we were doing.’

  ‘You … hunted me?’ I said, after a while.

  Scanlon hung his head.

  ‘You have to understand,’ he muttered, sounding younger. ‘I didn’t want to. It’s his idea. It’s always been his thing, not mine. I just do what I’m told.’

  ‘Oh, well, that makes it all better, Scanlon. If you just do as you’re told. You’re off the hook there then.’

  He flinched. ‘I tried to warn you. I didn’t want you to be caught. Don’t you remember?’

  Dimly, I did. The warning in the visitors’ book. Stop. That afternoon in the café. ‘You really need to stop doing this, you know. Take it from me, okay? It’s better if you quit.’

  ‘That was why I ignored you when we first turned up. You have to believe me, Frankie. I pretended I couldn’t see you. To protect you.’

  ‘Well, you did a pretty bad job of it then.’

  And then the scale of what he’d said rushed at me all at once.

  ‘You’ve trapped other ghosts. They’re in here, aren’t they? Around us. On the shelves. That’s why it’s called the storage room.’

  He hung his head and I knew I was right.

  ‘Do they know? Like I do?’

  ‘No. I haven’t spoken to them since they got caught. I couldn’t bear it. They all …’ He gulped. ‘They all went quiet eventually. They’ve been in there for years. He says they’re in a state of stasis – like, when they’re conscious, but barely. A sort of hibernation?’ He almost looked hopeful.

  My thoughts scrambled over each other, writhing like rats. ‘How does he make you do it, Scanlon? What happens if you don’t hunt? Does he starve you? Chain you up outside? Are you forced into it every time?’

  Please say yes, I thought desperately. We can still be friends if you say yes.

  ‘No,’ he said eventually, in a small voice. ‘He does none of those things.’

  Little by little, it clicked into place. I felt my throat tighten. ‘He doesn’t have to force you, does he? You don’t ever say no. You … go along with it. Out of your own free will. Because …’

  After months of not seeing things for what they were, now it was all I could do. The unbearable truth was everywhere, all at once.

  ‘Because you want to hunt us. Because … you’re lonely. And once we’ve seen you, and trusted you, and called you a friend – that’s the best part of it all for you, isn’t it?’

  Scanlon looked like a cowering dog, waiting to be kicked.

  ‘And even though you know what will happen, you always go along with Crawler’s plans. Oh, you might try to fight it, at first,’ I said quickly, not fooled by that flash of protest on his face, ‘but not for long. That was why you didn’t keep ignoring me. Why you came without Crawler. Why …’ my voice broke, ‘we went to the tree house all those times. You like it when we trust you. You want us to. You love being needed.’

  As soon as I said it, I knew I was right. Scanlon had told me he’d never been to school. So he had no chance of making friends – not ones that were alive anyway. Even if, by sheer fluke, he did come across anyone who wanted to be his buddy, I couldn’t see him inviting anyone back to this dump. Plus – let’s call a spade a spade – he was dirty, he smelt, he wasn’t much of a talker, had yellow teeth and weird clothes and … that face. So different, I thought, with a complicated mix of disgust and pity, to the glossily confident children who’d trampled through my house all summer. Those kids weren’t the type to give him a second look, unless it was to double-check he wasn’t standing too close to them.

  ‘Dead kids are the only friends you’ll ever have,’ I said.

  ‘You’ve got it,’ he said tonelessly. ‘Well done. Full marks to you.’

  Scanlon peered carefully through the holes in my can and stared for a moment at my face.

  He gave a grim nod. ‘Told you,’ he said.

  There was the heavy thud of footsteps somewhere.

  ‘But why, Scanlon? Why hunt ghosts at all? Why trap them in cans and stick them on a shelf for years on end? What’s the point?’

  The door to the awful room slammed open. I plummeted through the air in one dizzying quick motion, as if Scanlon was trying to hide me behind his back.

  ‘You’re not talking to it, are you, Scanlon?’ Crawler sounded as smeared and lurching as the light bulb overhead. ‘We’ve talked about this. Don’t chat to it, don’t sympathise. You can dismantle the friendship now. You’ve done your job.’

  ‘I was j-just—’ Scanlon stammered.

  ‘Scanlon, what have I always told you?’

  Scanlon muttered something.

  ‘Louder, please,’ said Crawler.

  ‘Don’t mistake them for humans,’ said Scanlon.

  ‘Exactly. Put it away.’

  My can wobbled, then went still.

  He’s put me on the top shelf, I thought. Like a dirty secret. Next to all the others.

  I pressed my eyes up to my peephole and saw Scanlon curl up on the mattress, still fully dressed in his filthy jeans and T-shirt. No wonder he smelt. No wonder he always moved so stiffly during the day, if that was his bed.

  Then Crawler flicked the switch, and everything went dark.

  TIME LIMPED ON. While I sat in my tuna can, staring at the walls, Scanlon was kept busy all day and long into the night, running errands for Crawler. Although it was hard to tell one hour from the next, there seemed to be a rough pattern to our days.

  When Scanlon got up, bleary-eyed, and stumble
d out of the room in response to Crawler shouting his name from elsewhere, that was morning. When he limped in hours later, yawning, and crashed out on the mattress, that was evening. The intervals between, when he’d run in and fetch a bottle of poison or dusty book from the shelves, those were daytime.

  Occasionally, and only if Crawler wasn’t shouting for him, Scanlon would reach tiredly for a battered old laptop he kept next to his mattress. I guessed this was Skool Tools time.

  And apart from the odd, shamefaced glance in my direction, Scanlon largely acted as if I wasn’t there at all. It was as if his terrible confession had never happened. Or rather, as if it had happened and he’d rather bury himself in busyness than make eye contact with the latest dead person he’d betrayed.

  My feelings about it all were complicated. I knew he expected me to hate him. But I couldn’t. He was too pitiful for that. You can’t hate a rat for scavenging through a bin for scraps. Neither could I blame a motherless, lonely boy for conning ghosts into friendship, even though he knew what would happen to them if he did. No. I couldn’t hate him.

  At times I wished I did, because that would have been a good, honest, strong feeling. A sign he still mattered. But the truth was, most of the time I didn’t feel anything about him at all. I certainly didn’t feel happier when he came into the room, not like before. Something had died between us, and I don’t just mean me. He wasn’t the person I’d wanted him to be. He wasn’t brave, or special, or wise. He was just … ordinary. An ordinary wretched coward. I hadn’t lost a friendship, because it had never been a friendship to begin with.

  In fact, nothing much went on in my brain at all during those lightless days.

  I wasn’t plotting my revenge on Scanlon. I wasn’t even working out how I could escape back home. What would have been the point in that? Home is a place where people miss you if you’re not there. But nobody would be missing me. Seriously, who would care that Frankie Ripley, long-deceased resident of Sea View, was now nothing more than a canned ghost? I mean, would they be putting out a Missing Poltergeist alert? Crying into their pillows at night, longing for my return?

  My guess was no.

  If anything, Historic Homes were probably breathing massive sighs of relief that doors weren’t being constantly slammed and prams weren’t being thrown and windows weren’t being smashed and Chrix’s hard-boiled eggs were safe from harm. Sea View belonged to them now, not me.

  And another thing. Crawler had found it as easy as anything to kidnap me from Sea View. All it had taken had been that handmade ghost squisher of his. That Juvenile Corpse Barrier thing that had meant to protect me had been broken as easily as if it was made of butter.

  No one had turned up, asking Crawler what his intentions were. No checks, no passport control, no ‘Mind if we take a look in your bag, sir? Anything to declare?’ He’d helped himself and smuggled me out and no one had done a thing to stop him. If Jill – or anyone else in the afterlife, for that matter – really cared about keeping dead children safe, they had a funny way of showing it.

  It was time to wake up. I was completely alone. My friendship with Scanlon had been fake. And I had no one to blame but myself and those destructive feelings of mine. Let’s face it: every time I felt anything, it usually led to death or disaster.

  Maybe the answer was just to feel nothing instead?

  So that’s what I decided to do. I sat in the darkness, and let it drain me of myself.

  After a while, it was as if my brain had been scraped out by a spoon, leaving just a big blank space where Frankie Ripley had once been, and very nice that was too. I felt light-headed at the beautiful emptiness inside me, like a terrible stomach ache had finally gone.

  ‘Right then, my trophies. Moving day. Up and at ’em. Time to stretch your legs.’

  It was Crawler.

  My can shook, was lifted through the air, and a few seconds later there was the sound of a lock snapping in place. Sluggishly, I peered around. Had Crawler just said we were on the move? But where to? Were we going to be released? Plopped back into freedom, like a crab returned to sea by day-trippers? And where on Earth would I go then?

  An engine started. Things around me went whoosh and zoom. Everything shook, as if we were driving along a long dirt track. I was jolted around like popcorn in a pan.

  Footsteps, a door opening. Lifting again.

  Through my punched holes, I caught glimpses of fir trees, dancing in the wind. Birds sang.

  I felt incredulous. Perhaps we really were about to be let loose? Maybe Crawler wasn’t that bad, after all. Who knew what went on behind that deceptively bland face of his? Maybe this was all part of some extremely complicated ghost rescue mission or something?

  Then there were glimpses of something else. Man-made and dirty-bright. What is that? I pressed my face against the can and stared. In front of us was an ugly mishmash, a strange castle – a sprawling perspective-defying construction. It had turrets sticking out at mad angles and slanting windows in places that made no sense. It appeared to have been cobbled together from old bits and pieces: a jumble of wooden pallets, garden sheds, corrugated iron panels, splintered fence posts. It looked like it had been designed by a toddler and nailed together by a madman. Its overall lunatic design was enhanced by very rough brushstrokes of red and yellow and green paint.

  I stared at it in confusion, not convinced. I thought maybe I was about to be released into the woods like an endangered rare panda? Unless the castle was to be my night shelter, or something? I eyed it warily. It didn’t look like something you’d want to sleep in at night – or even during the day, for that matter. It didn’t look like something that you’d want to close your eyes in at all. It would give a migraine to a blind man. It didn’t look like a haven.

  It looked like a nightmare.

  ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ Crawler sounded as if he was contemplating a glittering cathedral, not the garish mess I saw.

  There was no reply from Scanlon.

  On the move again. The crunch of boots on gravel.

  A door squeaking open. A low downward motion and, seconds later, I was still.

  ‘Come on then, Scanlon,’ said Crawler. ‘Bring out your dead.’

  MY CAN SPUN quickly, like a weird carousel ride. There was a sawing sound, the grind of ripping metal, and then the top was lifted off. I blinked upwards, into the grey light above – and at a pair of sallow cheeks that could have been Scanlon’s, until I realised it was Crawler eyeing me. He’d skipped the blusher. Now I could see how pasty his skin really was. It was like looking at a human crossed with an albino rat. Or a creature from the deep you only saw on nature documentaries. The ones that were disgusting.

  ‘Wow, your blusher must have been really good—’

  ‘Out,’ said Crawler.

  Gingerly, like a mole, I crawled out of the can, blinking, cautious. As my eyes adjusted, I saw we were in a large shadowy room.

  Once I’d struggled free of the can I saw the red letters on its label.

  FIDDLER’S TUNA: IT’S GREY AND SMELLS BAD, BUT IT’S CHEAP AND FILLING!

  Just as I’d suspected. Tuna. The devil’s own food.

  I looked at my body in shock, held up my minuscule fingers to my face with horrified wonder. Would I ever get back to my usual size again?

  ‘Who are you?’ said a voice next to me.

  I wheeled around in surprise.

  Next to me, a pale face was peeking out of MILLER MUSHY PEAS: HEAVY ON THE MUSH, LIGHT ON PEAS!

  The face gave a friendly nod.

  Too taken aback to do anything else, I raised my tiny matchstick fingers in a stunned wave.

  The face looked back into its can and said excitedly: ‘Obediah, there’s a girl here!’

  ‘Well, stop lollygagging and get a move on so I can get out!’ came the muffled reply.

  A few minutes later, two young boys had crawled out of the pea can. They stood shivering in faded cotton trousers and threadbare shirts. Both had the same shiny new-conker
hair, the same alert, interested way of lifting their chins attentively, as if ready for anything that should come their way. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the stained red patch on the taller boy’s shirt, the obvious lack of limb where his right arm should have been and the vivid bruising on the shorter boy’s forehead and his bashed-in temple, I’d have found it hard to believe they were dead at all.

  ‘What’s your name?’ asked the boy in the bloody shirt.

  ‘I’m …’

  ‘She’s forgotten!’ he guffawed, nudging the other boy with his remaining arm.

  ‘I haven’t.’

  But I had, for a second.

  TRYING TO KEEP the uncertainty out of my voice, I said: ‘I’m Frankie. Who are you?’

  ‘Obediah,’ said the one-armed boy. ‘And this is my baby brother, Theo.’ He indicated the boy with the bruised head, who was staring around the dark room in a sort of trance.

  ‘From the Camberwell spike.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Spike,’ said Obediah. He widened his eyes. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t know what a spike is. Ain’t you never met a workhouse boy before?’ He eyed my shredded clothes uncertainly. ‘You don’t look like a toff. What are you, soft in the head?’

  ‘Have you seen a boy, about our age?’ said Theo eagerly. ‘He gave us much merriment. I have often wondered where he went.’

  ‘You mean Scanlon,’ I said grimly. ‘He’s over there.’

  The boys both fell silent as they caught sight of him, shuffling his feet a few metres away.

  While the boys stared at Scanlon in confusion, Crawler occupied himself with inspecting the room around us, tapping walls and flicking switches as excitedly as a kid with a new toy at Christmas.

  ‘Him?’ said Theo, sounding disappointed as he took in Scanlon. ‘Never! He’s taller, for a start. Our friend was our height. And that person’s face drops like a dead man from the gallows. Our friend was a proper gigglemug.’

  ‘And yet that sharp nose is certainly his. I feel that is him, but grown like a tree,’ said Obediah.