That night, David heard crying again. The ghost boy was weeping in a thin, quiet way to itself, as if it didn’t know or care if anyone heard it. The sound was clearer and louder than before, as if the ghost was becoming more real every time he went into the ducts. David sat up in bed to listen.
“What’s wrong?” whispered David. The ghost didn’t answer, but the sobbing became slightly louder. David was sure the boy had heard him.
“Where are you?” David asked again.
The ghost snuffled and a voice from nowhere said, “I’m lost.”
“Lost?” David was puzzled. He looked around and tried to work out where the voice was coming from. “Where do you want to go?” he asked.
“I don’t know, I’m lost.”
“Well, where do you belong, then?”
“Sod that,” hissed the ghost. David laughed. A swearing ghost! The ghost laughed back.
“Sod that!” said the voice, and this time David could place it. It was coming from the floor by the side of his bed, and when he turned to look, there was the ghost lying there. He was on his side toward the wall, but he had twisted his head around so that David could see his wide, tearstained face breaking out into a laugh as he looked up at him. The face got bigger, and at first David thought he was sitting up, but it wasn’t that. His face was simply getting bigger, wider, closer. Maybe it was just the ghost’s way of getting closer to him, but it made David cry out in fright. Then the laugh faded, and the figure faded with it, and all David could make out was a paleness in the place where the ghost had sat.
“I’m here now,” said the voice softly, and David almost jumped out of bed in fright, because suddenly the voice wasn’t coming from the floor by his bed, but from behind the grille leading to the ducts. There was a pause and then the voice said clearly, “Come in here with me.”
David felt a thrill of fear go up his spine. Go in there—into the night with a ghost? He shook his head.
“Why do you want me to go in there?”
“We can get that old guy.”
“Who are you? What’s your name?”
“I don’t have a name,” said the ghost.
“You must have a name.”
“No name!”
The ghost sounded angry, so David said, “I’ll call you Charlie, then.”
“That’s not my real name.”
The voice seemed to be moving about and it was making David feel odd, trying to talk to someone who only had a shape sometimes. He turned his bedside light on, slipped out of bed, and went to the ducts to peer in. He couldn’t see anything.
“Where are you?” he hissed.
“Here. Sometimes.” The ghost laughed. “Sometimes I’m here and sometimes I’m somewhere else. Come inside. You’ll be able to see me if you come in.”
“Somewhere else where?”
“Somewhere that’s not here.”
“Is that where you come from?”
“I used to be with the others.”
“What others?”
“I don’t know. The others.”
“Where were you with the others?”
“I don’t know.”
David was getting cross. The ghost’s answers didn’t tell him anything—no name, no place, nothing.
“What do you want me for?”
“It’s lonely in here. I want you to play with me.”
“I don’t like your games,” said David anxiously, remembering what had happened in the old man’s apartment.
The ghost laughed. David thought he could see it again. He peered into the gloom. “I didn’t like what you did to that apartment.”
“I hate him! He’s evil. He’s old. He wants to get me!”
“He wants to get you? Why?”
“He wants me, he wants me inside him, but he won’t get me.”
“What, do you think he wants to eat you? That’s nuts.”
“You don’t know. Come in here with me.”
“No.”
“Please. It’s scary on my own. We can be friends. Come in…”
“I’m tired. I have school tomorrow. I…”
“You should do as I say. I could get you like I get him. You…”
“No!” shouted David in fear. He stepped back from the ducts and the ghost shrieked as if he had just caused it an unearthly pain. In a flash before his eyes he saw the creature again. Something had gone wrong. Its hands were reaching forward, holding on to the grille, and its body stretched out behind as if some unearthly force was blowing it back into the ductwork. It didn’t want to go; it was hanging on as hard as it could. Its mouth was open and yelling, but David couldn’t hear anything. He could see the white clear fingers on the bars, he could see the face perfectly clearly. He could even feel the ghost’s cold breath, which smelled of dust and cold metal.
David leapt up with a cry, half wanting to run, half wanting to help, but in the next moment the force got too strong and the boy blew away. He could hear the ghostly body bumping and swirling down the ducts as he was rushed away deep into the building.
Everything went quiet. About ten seconds later he heard the weeping again. It went on for a minute or two, then it stopped. David heard nothing more for the rest of the night.
8
The Quick Mind of Sis Parkinson
On Thursday afternoon Sis Parkinson came by to do housework for Mr. Alveston again. She liked the old man. She thought it was a complete gas that he pretended to look up her skirt and see what color underwear she had on, although both of them would really have been mortified if he ever actually did see. He’d lived an interesting life, he was funny, knew a little about everything and a lot about some things. He was good company.
He reminded Sis of a naughty boy trapped in an old, old body. When she’d walked him to the shops last time, he’d held on to her elbow trembling like a leaf, he was so fragile.
“What’s it like being old?” she’d asked him.
“I don’t feel any different from when I was ten. It’s just that everything’s so worn out,” he told her.
This time she brought along a bottle of red wine and some salted nuts and other snacks in her bag. She was thinking that when she’d finished the cleaning, she’d get out a couple of glasses and put the nuts in little bowls, and she and Mr. Alveston could sit and get tipsy together before she went home. Do him a world of good—and her, too.
I could fancy him if he was forty or fifty years younger, she thought as she waited for the elevator. Or if I was fifty years older, she thought, and she roared out loud with laughter at such a thought, just as the door opened and a middle-aged woman clutching a poodle in her arms dashed out. She looked at Sis as if she was mad for standing there on her own, roaring with laughter.
I like being a bit kooky myself, thought Sis.
But when she got to Mr. Alveston’s, her good mood disappeared.
The old man was gray and ill looking, a shadow of himself. He’d aged years over two days. He peeped anxiously at her from the doorway and told her he wouldn’t be needing her today, but when she looked past him into the apartment, the place had been utterly pulled to pieces. It took her five minutes before he gave up with a useless gesture and let her in. He sat down at the table, looking down at his wrinkled hands. He was trembling so much more than last time. He hadn’t shaved. He was still in his pajamas and looked, if Sis knew anything about it, depressed.
“What’s the matter, love, what is it?”
“Nothing, nothing,” he told her.
Sis stuck her lip out. “Are you having one of your lapses, Robert?” she asked him, and he said, “I just don’t know, Sis. I don’t seem to know what I’m doing at the moment, I don’t.”
Sis looked around the apartment. She’d never seen such a mess. She opened her bag and took out the bottle of wine. The apartment would have to wait. People before tidiness, that was her motto.
Mr. Alveston was so distressed and scared about what was happening that he didn’t want to talk about it—he was sure they’d put
him away if they found out. But once Sis got him going, out it all came. Poor old man! No wonder he was in such a state. He was wrecking his own apartment without even knowing he was doing it!
“That’s a funny sort of lapse,” said Sis.
“I just can’t work out when I did it,” he told her. “I mean, we were out, weren’t we? I was having a good day. I thought I could remember every second of what I did when we were out. But I must have come and wrecked everything and then gone out again and then come home again.… It seems so … so deliberate. It’s as if I was being two people at once. That’s not just going crazy, is it, Sis? It’s going completely bananas. I don’t want to go mad. It’s so unfair. After living more than ninety years, you’d think going mad wouldn’t be a problem, would it?”
“Of course you’re not going mad,” said Sis, although she wasn’t really so sure. “If you were going to go crazy you’d have done it years ago. Now, what else has been going on?”
Mr. Alveston told the rest of his tale. He was hearing voices. He was seeing things. He’d seen a boy in the ventilation system, for instance.
“A boy? In the ventilation system?”
“Yes,” admitted Mr. Alveston, and he looked at Sis from the corners of his eyes to see how she reacted. It was the first time he’d told anyone about that and even though he knew it was ridiculous, he would have just loved Sis to jump up and say that it was all true.
Sis turned around to look at the grille on the wall and then back to stare at him.
“Well,” she said.
“It would explain everything,” said Mr. Alveston. “Do you see? There’s some children found their way in and it’s not me, it’s them. It’s them coming in to do all these horrible things. Do you see? Sis?”
Oh, dear. It was worse than she thought. Once they started inventing fantasies to explain what was happening to them, they were quite well gone. And once they started believing them—well. Dear, oh, dear, it looked as though Alison was right. He’d have to go in a home after all.
“It’s possible,” insisted Mr. Alveston. He was beginning to babble. “They’d know when I go out and when I come in. They could be in there now. They could be listening to everything we say.”
Dear, oh dear, oh dear.
“Yes, well, of course it’s possible,” said Sis carefully. “Stranger things have happened, I know. Only it’s not very likely, is it?”
“I knew it—I am going mad!” wailed the poor old man. He put his face in his hands and wept, and Sis’s heart melted away for him.
“It’s the home for me, isn’t it, Sis? I’m not safe anymore, am I?”
“Well,” she said practically, “the first thing to do is find out if it is true or not, then we can worry about what’s going on in there.” She tapped his poor old head. “Now, drink up your wine”—and she picked hers up and gulped it down—“and let’s have a look behind that grille.”
She put down her glass and went over to the grille, with Mr. Alveston tottering along behind her. He was such a frail little old thing that she had to be careful not to dash and jump about in case she knocked him down. She got a chair and put it against the wall, and climbed up to have a look in.
“The grille comes off easily; it just slides out,” said Sis. “Have you got a flashlight?” she asked, but Mr. Alveston was already running off to fetch it.
The yellow beam poked a long bright finger down the duct. There was nothing to be seen but patches of dust and dirt, but that was what attracted her attention. It was the sort of thing someone who does a lot of cleaning would notice. The duct should have been either dusty all over or clean all over, but this one had little triangles and scrapes of greasy dust left here and there, just as if someone had been wriggling their way along and wiped most of the dust off onto themselves as they went by.
“Well, that’s very odd,” said Sis. She got down off the chair and examined the wall under the grille. Sure enough, there were smudges and marks on the wallpaper. Now that she thought about it, she remembered rubbing several black marks with a damp cloth off the wall the last time she was there.
Sis dashed across to the table and took a long swig of wine. Mr. Alveston was standing there, playing with his pajama cord and looking nervously at her, but she didn’t say anything yet. She didn’t want to raise his hopes. Maybe it was he who had wiped the mess off the inside of the ducts and onto the wall, who knew?
But she was on the trail now. She sat the old man down and set off down the hall outside the apartment, knocking on doors and seeing if anyone else had heard or seen anything strange. It was afternoon, most of the neighbors were out at work, but she did find some people who were able to help. Two doors along was a young man called Malcolm who worked nights. He told her that yes, he had heard all sorts of odd noises coming from the ducts. He’d thought they were doing some sort of work in the building, weren’t they?
Farther along she found a middle-aged woman who’d taken early retirement. “Oh, yes. We hear all sorts going on,” she said. “It’s noises coming in from the other apartments, you see. You get to hear all sorts—I don’t think people realize just how far noises carry in the ducts. Sometimes it’s so clear, you could swear you were in the same room. It’s fascinating. Arguments, fights, people falling in and out of love, all sorts of things. You can never quite make out what people are saying, though. There are times I wish I could shrink myself down to half size so I could get in and have a good listen. Just the other afternoon I heard the most awful screams. Dreadful. I was very concerned.”
“What happened?”
“They stopped.” The woman smiled vaguely and Sis thought, Well, you should have done something.
Farther down the hall she found an old woman who lived with her three cats and a parrot called Philbert. She had to put a cover over the parrot’s cage whenever anyone came to knock at the door because he swore in the most disgusting fashion. It was the old woman who’d taught him to swear, and she was always looking for new words to teach him. But she was a kind old lady who only did it to amuse herself.
“Oh, so that’s what it is,” she said. “I’d forgotten about the old ducts. I had them blocked up in my apartment. Yes, there’ve been all sorts of odd noises coming through the walls lately. It sounds like someone crawling around in there. Especially on Tuesdays and Thursdays, for some reason,” she added.
“Right,” said Sis. “Thank you for your help.”
And on the next floor down, Sis found a teacher who was having a day off, and who’d found some odd things happening. It had started with a boot missing, the left one. Then the following week, the boot had come back and the right one was gone—along with her remote control for the TV and a few other things.
“Can you remember what day it was when these things went missing?” asked Sis. After some thought, Mary said it had happened at the beginning of the week, Tuesday perhaps.
Sis went back to Mr. Alveston and told him what she’d found out. Then she did the housework. She was as cross as a rhinoceros.
9
The Second Ghost
Being haunted wasn’t at all what David had expected it to be. Now he knew why people were so scared of ghosts. It was because ghosts were so full of fear themselves. All that fear made this ghost dangerous. What did he want? Who was he and what was his real name? Ghosts are mystery stories. Where did he come from, and why was he haunting Mahogany Villas? The clue to the whole thing seemed to be the old man, Mr. Alveston. What had the ghost to do with him, and why did he hate him so much?
Over the next few days, David thought about these questions, but he had no answers. At night, he listened for the mysterious voice or the sound of weeping in the ducts, but he heard nothing at all. Perhaps the ghost had gone to rest.
* * *
It was a Tuesday afternoon. David knew what was going to happen as soon as he got home from school.
I’m not going in, he told himself. Then he said it aloud. “I’m not going in!” Silence answered him, but
it was a silence with someone in it.
David drank some juice and turned on the TV, but all the time he was aware of the dark space behind the wall calling him. Soon he found himself listening through the babble from the TV, trying to make out a whisper that he was sure was coming from the ducts. He couldn’t make it out, but he felt if only he got just a little closer, or perhaps if he just got a little bit inside the ducts, he’d be able to hear what the ghost boy wanted to tell him. He did his best, but it was just too tempting.
“Just … oh, all right, then!” he snapped. And he got up, pushed the sofa to the wall, and put his head close to the vent. He held his breath and listened. That whisper! It was there, it was calling him, but he still couldn’t quite make it out.…
“I’m not coming in,” he said grumpily, but there was no answer.
David went back to watch more TV, but it was no use. Within another five minutes he’d changed out of his school clothes, slid back the grille, and was inside with the ghost.
“Just for a bit, then,” he whispered.
He could feel the ghost inside there, everywhere. He couldn’t see him, but he was there—in the darkness, in the cool air, everywhere. David began to move along the duct toward Mary’s flat, but the ghost didn’t want that.
“Not here,” the air whispered to him. “Not there. Up, up. Go up!”
And although he knew there was trouble in the air, David did what the ghost wanted. He began to wriggle his way backward toward the up duct. All around him, he could feel the wicked glee of the ghost. He was scared; maybe they were going to do something really bad this time. A trap for Mr. Alveston? Trip wires, something falling on his head when he opened the door? He’d have to make sure nothing like that happened.
David had made his way up to the fifth floor and begun to creep along the duct toward Mr. Alveston’s apartment when he heard the noise behind him. It was a rattling, banging noise, far away but getting rapidly closer. David froze in fear.
“What’s that?” he hissed.
Someone else didn’t like it, either. All around him, David could feel the fear. The little ghost was terrified out of his wits.
The Ghost Behind the Wall Page 6