Storm

by Nicola Skinner

  ‘Our friend has greatly changed,’ said Theo.

  ‘No,’ I said heavily. ‘He hasn’t. He’s been doing the same thing for years.’

  Obediah looked at me with interest. ‘Are you from Camberwell, Frankie? You do not seem familiar.’

  I stared at him. ‘No, Cliffstones.’

  They looked at each other, then back to me. ‘What parish is that?’

  ‘P-parish?’ I stammered.

  Theo muttered to the older boy, ‘Where are her clogs? She is practically barefoot. What spike doesn’t give out clogs?’

  Half-remembered facts and bits of lessons ran through my mind. ‘I don’t belong to a spike,’ I explained, ‘if you mean a poorhouse? They don’t exist any more.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Theo and Obediah together, and a peculiar happiness stole over their features.

  We were interrupted by a whining sound, the cry of something very young, nearby. I felt it pluck at my ankles and felt an immediate desire to kick it as far away as possible. I’d only given it a little tap with my one trainer when—

  ‘You’ll murther the lamb,’ said Theo, giving me a filthy look, as he swooped in and picked up the snotty mess at my feet.

  The child could only have been two, at a push. She had a dirty red bow dangling loosely from her curly hair. She threw me a baleful look and then turned her eyes towards Theo.

  ‘Ma,’ said the toddler. She looked as if she wanted to say something else, and for a second her face crumpled up in anguish, and then her emotions seemed to pass, and she simply stuck her thumb in her mouth and stared at him with vacant, almost unseeing eyes.

  ‘Ma? Oh, bless you, duck. Where is your mother today? Is she in your can?’ And he reached out and tickled the girl under her chin until she giggled softly.

  But it was clear the can was empty.

  Obediah, watching this exchange, said to me: ‘Theo’s always been like that. He’d befriend a mouse rather than kill it. He’s only here because he ran in after me and got caught too. Heart like butter.’

  I threw him a distracted smile, as the cogs of my brain worked slowly.

  ‘Boys,’ I said quietly, ‘when were you born?’

  Theo stopped tickling the little girl under her chin. ‘I dunno,’ he said simply. ‘No one ever told us that.’

  Obediah grinned. ‘What are you, a beak?’

  They both fell about laughing as if this was the wittiest joke on Earth. I eyed them uncertainly. It was like talking to a dictionary that kept opening at random words.

  ‘Erm, well, who was your queen, or king, when you were alive?’

  Now they seemed more certain.

  ‘Queen Victoria, of course,’ said Obediah.

  Queen Victoria? That meant they’d been alive … I counted back on my fingers. Back in the nineteenth century. If there had ever been any remaining doubt about Scanlon’s story, it disappeared then and there. He had collected ghosts – and not just from my time either. Obediah and Theo had died more than two hundred years ago.

  I eyed their wounds uneasily.

  Obediah saw me staring and gave me a level look.

  ‘Cotton press,’ he said simply. ‘She got me in the end. Theo crawled in to pull me out, and she got ’im too.’

  For a moment, I could say nothing.

  Obediah gave me a small smile. ‘’S all right, Frankie. It’s just what happens at the spike. All the time. We got off lightly. We’ve seen bodies pulled out of there with no skin left. Theo’s bash in the head is nothing to complain about – and I’m practically armless.’ He grinned. ‘You?’

  ‘Drowned.’

  They winced. ‘In the bath? I always thought they were wicked things,’ gasped Theo, eyes wide.

  ‘No, in the sea.’

  What a relief it was, to meet others like me! I was no longer the only dead child around. There were four of us now: the boys, the little girl in Theo’s arms, gripping on tightly to his thumb, and me.

  There were also other ghosts climbing out of their cans. Beyond us, from a TINNED SCRAMBLED EGG – NO SHELL, NO MESS, NO PROBLEM! can, a mud-smeared and broad-shouldered woman was beginning to emerge, her matted blonde plaits just visible beneath her crumbling bronze helmet.

  ‘Look at that driggle-draggle!’ said Theo in wonder.

  At the sound of human voices, she looked over and immediately raised her spear.

  We all took a step back.

  The last in the line to emerge, apologising profusely as she did so, was a slender young woman in a black dress. As she pulled herself out of COCKROACH BROTH: JUST LIKE MUM USED TO MAKE, a rectangular dent on her body became visible, starting just below her throat and ending around her belly button. She was practically flat around her tummy, as if something huge had landed on her once.

  She saw us looking and said politely: ‘I’m Vanessa. Have I missed anything important? I’m sorry if I held anything up!’

  She caught me and the boys staring at the bruising on her neck and gave a sweet smile.

  ‘My fault,’ she said. ‘Should have taken my purse.’ Then she looked into the shadows. ‘Where’s that lovely boy? He said I could look after him.’ She touched the tightly braided cornrows on her hair gently with shining red nails. ‘He was the same age as my … as my …’ Her voice tailed off.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said simply. ‘I’ve forgotten again. Mind like a sieve! Never mind! Ignore me!’

  Just as I was trying to work out where she came from, with her shoulder pads and vivid blue eye shadow, Crawler cleared his throat loudly.

  ‘All right then,’ he said. ‘Let’s get started.’

  CRAWLER STARED IN our direction with a fixed, blank look. ‘First thing to know is very simple: I’m in charge here. If you remember nothing else, remember that, and we’ll get along just fine.’

  ‘Oh, I love having a boss,’ said Vanessa. ‘I hope I do a good job.’ She paused. Looked around worriedly. ‘What is the job? Do you know, duck?’

  I gave her an uncertain smile and shrugged. ‘Your guess is as good as—’

  ‘Second thing: congratulations! You’ve won the afterlife lottery!’ said Crawler. ‘I’m offering you bed, board, work, an adoring audience. And the best bit of all is: you’ll never have to deal with the outside world ever again.’

  I looked down the line of ghosts. It was clear none of us had any idea what he was talking about. ‘An adoring audience?’ What did that mean?

  Even Scanlon looked confused.

  ‘Ma,’ the little girl with no name said uncertainly.

  ‘Third thing,’ said Crawler. ‘I know you can see me, but it’s not mutual. You’re invisible to me. The only ghost-seer in this family is him.’ He jerked his head in Scanlon’s direction. ‘But I can’t. Never could. Never will. So even if you don’t like what I have to say, don’t bother whingeing, because I won’t notice. All right?’

  The little girl in Theo’s arms gave a faint whimper, and was promptly soothed by Theo rocking her gently.

  Crawler smiled. ‘But I don’t think there’ll be much complaining. Because you’re going to have a worry-free existence. You’re going to have purpose. You’re going to be useful, and I know how much you like to be useful. And once you’ve got used to how I like things to be done,’ said Crawler, ‘why, then we’ll all be one big happy, money-spinning, showbiz family, and that’s a Crawler guarantee!’

  He spread his arms with a flourish and looked to the shadowy thing to his right again. I peered into the gloom, intrigued, to see what kept drawing his eye. I saw several rows of plastic chairs, in pairs.

  ‘And because a business – and its employees – works best when it knows how it started, I’m going to tell you how it all began.’

  And as we all slowly inflated back to our usual sizes, Crawler finally revealed the truth.

  ‘Once upon a time, I had a wife and a baby boy. We lived in an old caravan, held down insignificant jobs, and plodded on through life. Although Scanlon’s mother—’

  ‘Her name was
Nina,’ muttered Scanlon.

  ‘… always maintained that if we had each other, we had everything, I disagreed. I spent hours asking myself: how could I give myself a better life? How could I eat fine food, wear fine clothes, and travel the world in style? The answer boiled down to one thing, and one thing only: money. And we had none of it. But this was solved when my wife died of heart failure, leaving me with a healthy sum of money from her life insurance—’

  ‘That was meant to go towards paying for me to go to school and a house, which you agreed to when she was in hospital,’ muttered Scanlon.

  Crawler made a flicking gesture with his hand, as if these words were pests to be swatted away.

  ‘Now, not long after she died, she did something most surprising. She returned. Not to me.’ Crawler glanced at Scanlon. ‘To him. And this was fascinating, granted, but also completely useless. What use are ghosts? I thought to myself. Ghosts don’t put crystal glasses on the table. Until one day, when I saw something that helped me realise how Scanlon’s skill could be used.’ His face shone with an eerie, passionate zeal. ‘I saw a queue.’

  I choked back a snort. Big whoop.

  ‘Made up of at least a hundred people, jostling each other impatiently, desperate to be first in line. And it wasn’t for the CuppaGrubba Drive-thru. It wasn’t even for the toilets, although that queue was also pretty long. It was for a fairground ghost train.’

  I looked again at that snake-like construction coiled next to Crawler in the gloom. Saw the mechanical levers at the front.

  ‘In that queue,’ Crawler went on, his voice getting faster and more animated, ‘I saw excitement. I saw potential. I saw money.’

  Crawler looked into the shadows with glittering eyes.

  ‘I said to myself: if people are paying to be scared, that means there’s money in it. And if there’s money in fake ghosts, just think how much money you could get with real ghosts. And that’s when I had my idea. One that would change our life.’

  Crawler’s voice grew gentle and his entire body relaxed. I realised that he wasn’t really talking to us at all. He was recounting his plans and schemes just for the pleasure of hearing them aloud. Perhaps it was the first time he’d done so. Either way, he was practically floating with satisfaction.

  ‘The two pauper boys were our first catch. Scanlon spotted them wandering around a block of residential flats in Camberwell, on the site of the old workhouse they died in. He was only seven back then, which was quite an advantage, in fact, as he was able to capture their sympathy and earn their trust in a way a grown man may not have done. Back then, of course, he didn’t know what I had planned, so their friendship grew very strong, quite organically. He had no guilty conscience, you see. Proper pals they were, weren’t you, son?’

  Scanlon hung his head.

  ‘The woman came next. Er … Vanity? Valerie?’

  ‘Vanessa,’ said Scanlon.

  ‘Hello, poppet,’ said Vanessa with a delighted wave. ‘Where did you get to?’

  ‘That ghost we found roaming the lobby of the bank where she’d worked. It took a bit of a shine to my boy, as it missed its own daughter, apparently. Scanlon was nine then. It confided in him about how it died – a vending machine landed on its chest, back in the 1980s.’

  ‘It swallowed up my only coin,’ sighed Vanessa, ‘and I’d promised to get a Twix for Giles the accountant. But I didn’t want to return to him empty-handed. So I gave it a shake, hoping to dislodge some chocolate anyway – and it landed on me. Silly me.’

  ‘Bad luck,’ I whispered.

  ‘Thanks.’ She smiled. ‘Although Giles sent some lovely flowers for the funeral, so that’s nice.’

  ‘Scanlon found the toddler up in Glasgow, all by itself, crawling out of an empty tenement somewhere near Pollok. We’re not sure about its origins at all. Apparently it can’t speak properly, and let me tell you, that’s a blessing. Blank spaces are wonderful opportunities for audiences to imagine their own stories, put their own imaginations to work, and that’s gold dust in this trade. Can you imagine all the tragic harrowing backstories punters are going to dream up for it? Plus there’s the fact that it’s a baby crying for its mother. People are going to go wild for it.’

  As if on cue, the little girl with the grubby red bow said, ‘Ma … Ma …’ again, and Theo looked at her adoringly.

  That was when it really sank in.

  We weren’t just prisoners. We were entertainment.

  CRAWLER CHECKED HIS watch and looked at us again. ‘Isolde, the Iron Age hag, came all the way from Swaffingham in Norfolk. A local man had written to the local news churn saying he’d heard the sound of thundering wheels driving through a playground. I consulted my books and realised that playground was all that remained of an ancient wood – one that had, twenty centuries ago, been home to an Iceni tribe. Well, you can imagine how exciting that was.’

  We all turned to look at the woman with the plaits, and she scowled at us and made a threatening motion with her spear. We looked away.

  ‘Capturing it took a few months, but Scanlon was able, eventually, to gain its confidence by building a fire and roasting a squirrel to eat. It couldn’t resist abandoning its chariot and wandering over to tell him he was doing it all wrong. Now, Isolde’s quite hard to understand, on account of it speaking the Moronic language—’

  ‘Brythonic,’ muttered Scanlon.

  ‘But, frankly, I think its non-verbal aggression will go down very well. So, after six painstaking years of hunting, I had the workhouse boys, Valerie—’

  ‘Vanessa,’ said Scanlon.

  ‘… the Scottish baby and Isolde. But I knew I needed someone very, very special to complete the display. I wanted someone unlike the others. I wanted a ghost with oomph. Oh, I looked long and hard for someone like you, Frances Ripley. In fact, I’d almost given up on ever finding a poltergeist. Until one of my sources …’ he tapped the side of his nose, ‘tipped me off about you. Reports of supernatural disturbances, he said, down in Dorset. Unexplained wreckages. Old house. It was textbook. And then – well, you know the rest.’ He threw a proud look in my general direction. ‘We caught a poltergeist. Exceptionally rare, almost impossible to find, let alone trap. You’re the icing on the cake, Frances. Top-drawer stuff.’

  I saw the other ghosts look at Scanlon then. Saw it dawning on them, as it had dawned on me, the lie that their friendship had been. And I almost felt sorry for them all, until I gave myself a shake. It didn’t matter any more. I was done with all of that.

  ‘So there you have it,’ gloated Crawler. ‘Now you know. My search is over. I have what I need. I’ll be opening a ghost train with actual ghosts. It’s going to be an absolute smash.’

  He clicked a button on the slender gadget in his hand, and on the large screen opposite us, a rippling image appeared.

  ‘Had these made up specially,’ he said. ‘They’re going out tonight.’

  I squinted at the screen. My reading skills weren’t the best any more, what with only having a visitors’ book to practise on, but I managed to make the following words out on the brightly coloured poster:

  Obediah painfully attempted to spell out the words for his brother, stumbling at every other letter. ‘We didn’t have much schooling at the spike,’ he said eventually, blushing. ‘What does it say?’

  But before I could help, Crawler was off again. ‘You are standing in the ground floor of the Crawler Lane Haunted House and Ghost Train™,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Painstakingly and lovingly hand-built by us.’

  Scanlon looked as if he was going to say something, then shrugged and went back to staring at a spot just above my shoulder.

  Something clicked into place. All those cuts and grazes he’d turned up with over the summer, his bruised knuckles and the paint splatters …

  ‘It’s a labour of love,’ smirked Crawler. ‘It’s a masterpiece. It’s right in the middle of a very large private wood, so we’re very remote. And people will travel for millions of miles and pay w
hatever we tell them to pay for a half-hour ride,’ Crawler boasted, rocking on his feet and looking up at the ceiling, as if contemplating just how high his money would reach.

  ‘D-dad,’ stammered Scanlon, ‘you never said we were going to put them in here. You said we were going to go into entertainment, and leave the ghost-hunting behind!’

  ‘I lied,’ said Crawler impatiently. ‘It was for your own good.’

  ‘Oh, you were lied to, were you, Scanlon?’ I said. ‘By someone you trusted? That must hurt.’

  CRAWLER FLICKED ON a few light switches and told us to board the ghost train. ‘I’m going to show you your rooms,’ he said.

  With a groan and a clang, the train roared to life, before taking us down murky passages and claustrophobically small tunnels. The entire Haunted House was built around a winding, almost never-ending rail track, which, Crawler explained, was meant to disorientate the passengers, so they never knew exactly where they were.

  ‘Heightens the experience,’ he said knowledgeably. ‘Make people feel lost, and you’re frightening them already.’

  As we flew through dank spaces, staring into the darkness around us, Crawler shouted instructions over his shoulder.

  ‘You never ask for help. You never address the customers directly, unless it is in character and agreed beforehand. You do not mention the ghost train at all – you maintain the illusion that they are visiting you in your own authentic time and place of origin.’

  One of the rooms we sped past contained a working replica of a cotton loom, a massive, noisy, clattering beast made of wood with a heavy barrel in the middle which shunted from one side of the room to the other quickly.

  ‘I want the workhouse brats to run in and out of the loom, trying to dodge it, as they attempt to rethread the needle and clean the dust from the machinery,’ said Crawler. ‘At various intervals throughout the day, I want them both to die all over again, screaming in pain. But – make it funny. Throw a little slapstick in there. You know, a few pratfalls here and there, before they get mangled.’

  ‘We’re being asked to just scream and run for a few hours a day?’ Theo looked as if he couldn’t believe his luck.