The Girl in Between

by Sarah Carroll

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘I promise.’

  She leaned back and pulled me tight against her. ‘Now go to sleep. I’ll wake you when the sun comes up. Tomorrow’s a new day. We’ll find a place, you and me, just you wait and see.’

  And I believed her.

  ROSE

  It’s afternoon. Monkey Man and Scarecrow are gone and Ma’s back at the table with her head in her hands and there are cans lying all over the kitchen. She looks wrecked.

  I don’t make tea and I don’t pick up the cans. I don’t even speak to her. I thought when she came down that she’d be real sorry and she’d say she didn’t mean to bring them here, that it was only cos she was drunk, and she’d promise never to do it again.

  But she doesn’t even bother. She just sits there and groans. The kitchen stinks and there’s ash on the table but I don’t do anything about it. It’s her stink. It’s her mess.

  ‘I’d murder a cup of tea,’ she says.

  I don’t put on water to boil. There’s no gas anyway but I don’t tell her that. Instead I pick up the bag that was full of cans last night. Now it just has plastic can holders and a receipt and a few coppers. I turn the bag upside down and everything falls out. I pick up the coins and throw the plastic bag behind me and I’m gone from the kitchen before it floats back down to the floor.

  I drop a few coins on the floor of the basement and the rest on the second floor, on top of the dead machines. Then I stand by the window and wait.

  It’s real dull this morning. It’s not raining but the whole world is grey. The clouds are so low I reckon I could stand on the roof on my tippy-toes and touch them. The city looks fed up, like all that’s needed is for one person to cry or to breathe too heavily and it’ll just melt into the sea.

  I think of Caretaker standing on his tippy-toes and looking into the basement and seeing the coins. I wonder if he still thinks it’s a ghost or if he realizes it’s just me. Part of me thinks he must know, but part of me thinks Caretaker’s crazy enough to keep believing in ghosts.

  I write my name in the dirt of the window. Then I draw a praying mantis. His arms are held up in front of him like he’s praying, but then I draw an insect beneath him and that’s the mantis’s dinner. He’s praying over his dinner before he munches it up.

  I breathe on the window and I can see my name in the breath that sticks to it. And the praying mantis looks just like the cranes that are leaning over the city. There’s a swarm of cranes out there, crawling over the old buildings and eating their flesh, and the metal frames of new buildings are really the bones of the old ones picked bare.

  The cranes look like they are creeping closer and closer.

  I turn away from the city and look at the dull room. I wonder if I blow air clouds fast enough can I fill it with fog? I breathe in and out real fast but the breath just disappears.

  Then I hear him.

  Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, stop.

  He’s coming. I don’t move. I stay still and wait for him. I hear him climb the stairs. Now he’s coming into the room. He looks like a ripped-up bag of rubbish that someone threw out of their car into a bush.

  There were only three coins left. He picks those up. He reaches the other machines and sees nothing there and he turns. I’m standing right here but he hasn’t hardly noticed me.

  ‘You know it was me,’ I say. ‘I put the coins down.’ But he ignores me. Walks straight past. ‘You’re crazy,’ I say, but I don’t think he hears. He goes out of the room and up the stairs.

  I go up to the first machine, the one by the door, and I look at the patch in the dust where I put the coin. What’s he doing?

  I leave the room and follow him up till he reaches the top. But he doesn’t go out onto the sky-bridge. He stops and tilts his head up and he stares at something. I come up behind him. There’s a trapdoor in the ceiling above the stairs and he’s looking at it like there’s an answer to a secret up there.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ I ask.

  He’s got a coin in his hand and he’s turning it over and over. ‘A mistake,’ he says. ‘See, I thought I’d locked the whole place up. But I didn’t think about that.’ He points a long, dirty fingernail at the trapdoor. ‘She did, though. She did.’

  I stare at him. What does he mean, she? Does he still believe it was a ghost that put out the coins? I feel kind of sorry for him cos I think he’s finally lost it.

  ‘Can you see it? I mean, a ghost or something?’

  Caretaker ignores me. He turns and walks out the door onto the sky-bridge and he stops and looks up at the blanket of clouds. I follow. Then I see his face and it snatches my breath away. It’s like it holds all the sadness of the night’s sky.

  I stand beside him and try to think of something nice to say. But I can’t. So I say, ‘I wonder when it closed down?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The mill,’ I say.

  ‘Forty-seven years ago.’

  ‘You remember when the mill was still open?’ I ask.

  ‘Remember? I was here,’ he says.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Caretaker, amn’t I?’

  ‘Oh.’ I thought that was just a name Ma gave him. I didn’t realize he really was the caretaker here. ‘How did it work?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Caretaker says.

  ‘The mill and the grain and the work the people did and all that?’

  Caretaker looks at me for a minute like he’s trying to decide what I’m up to.

  ‘Just wondering,’ I say, cos I’d rather listen to him talk than watch his face, all sad and quiet.

  He rummages around in his beard for a minute and then says, ‘Grain came down the canal in boats. Taken off the boats in bags. If they were wanted for storage, they’d be put in the Silo. If they were wanted for grinding, they came across a conveyor belt that used to be here.’ He points to the outside wall of the Silo on the other side of the sky-bridge. Then he draws a line through the sky till he’s pointing at the outside wall of the mill. There are matching square holes on both walls. I always wondered what they were for.

  He looks at me to see if that’s enough, but I don’t say anything so he goes on.

  ‘A mill works like one big machine. Each floor is a stage of grinding.’ He shuffles back into the mill and goes under the trapdoor and across to the big room on the sixth floor. He points at this massive metal thing that’s hanging from the ceiling by a few wires. It’s all twisted up and as big as a skip. ‘We called that the corkscrew. Grain would come across the conveyor belt from the Silo into the mill, through the ceiling above us here, and then down that chute into the flour bin.

  ‘To start with, the grain got poured into the corkscrew. It got ground up, and would go on down to the next floor and the next and the next. Each floor, more grinding. By the basement, you got flour. Put it in bags. Hauled it out.’

  Caretaker nods and turns away from me and goes back out onto the sky-bridge.

  ‘What happened?’ I call after him. ‘Why’d they close?’

  ‘Times moved on, is all. Wasn’t profitable. The men came and closed the place down. That was that.’

  The wind blows and catches the rim of his hat but he grabs it just in time. I can feel drops of rain now. I reckon it’s going to pour soon.

  ‘So why didn’t you go off and be a caretaker somewhere else when the mill closed?’ I ask.

  Suddenly, I think he’s going to cry. He’s all slumped over, even more than usual. ‘Was my fault. Should never have happened. All my fault.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t your fault, Caretaker,’ I say. ‘You couldn’t stop the Authorities from closing this place down. You can’t stop them from doing anything. All you can do is hide.’

  Caretaker’s smile is real watery. ‘I’m not hiding, kiddo. I’m just staying, is all. Tied to this place.’

  He looks down, below the sky-bridge, at the couch that’s covered in a sheet of plastic now that winter’s on the way. I can see something in his eyes. It
makes my heart stop. He looks sadder than anyone I’ve ever seen before.

  All at once I know something and it makes me feel real guilty.

  He’s not crazy at all. He has a secret. And it’s making him lonely.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, even though I’m not sure what I’m sorry for. But Caretaker looks back up and the sadness is almost gone now, like the wind blew it away.

  ‘Is it a girl, the . . . ?’ I stop myself from saying ‘ghost’ cos I know he doesn’t think it’s a ghost. He’s just remembering something. He doesn’t answer, so I say, ‘It’s just you said her.’

  He nods. ‘She was a girl all right. Near enough to your age. Eyes like a patch of sea when the sun catches it. A million freckles. And a laugh like rain on a tin roof.’

  So I was right. The mill does have a story. It just wasn’t the one I thought it was.

  ‘Does she have a name?’

  He looks down at the couch again and in this tiny voice he says, ‘Rose.’

  And that’s creepy cos I didn’t think he really would have a name for her. A name makes her real.

  ‘Who was she, Caretaker?’

  But Caretaker doesn’t answer.

  ‘You see her?’ I ask, just in case he actually is still talking about a ghost.

  But now he finally turns and looks real hard at me and he says, ‘No. No I don’t see her,’ and the way he says ‘see’ it’s like he’s making fun of me. Then he shuffles back inside and begins walking downstairs. As he’s disappearing, though, I hear him say something and he’s gone before I figure out what it was.

  It was, ‘And yes, I know it was you.’ He means he heard me say that I was the one who put the coins down. That means he heard me call him crazy too.

  I follow him to the top of the stairs. But he’s gone. Why do I always say the wrong thing?

  I’m looking down the staircase but I hear a sound from the big room. I look over and all of a sudden the massive corkscrew thing that hangs in the middle of the room swings. All on its own. I swear. The wind’s not strong enough to be doing that but it’s still swinging.

  I’m not scared of ghosts. I’m not.

  But before I know what I’m at, I’ve turned and legged it across the sky-bridge and up the ladder and onto the roof.

  When I reach the wall I check to make sure I’m not being followed.

  I’m not.

  I look down at the street. It’s lunchtime. Red Coat goes into a coffee shop. I grab the binoculars and watch her.

  She buys one sandwich and one coffee. She sits down outside, all alone. But she hardly eats anything. Just nibbles. She drinks her coffee, though, and smokes two cigarettes. She doesn’t talk to anyone and she doesn’t smile.

  I look over my shoulder at the ladder. It’s okay. Nothing is chasing me.

  There’s banging coming from the building site across the road. Further down the street I see the two girls that had ribbons in their hair. Their hair is loose and straight now, and they’re wearing hairbands to keep it back from their faces.

  I wonder who Rose was? And I wonder what Caretaker is really seeing when he’s looking at the trapdoor?

  But there’s something else too. I have that annoying feeling that there’s something I should worry about, but I don’t know what it is.

  I go back to Red Coat, who is looking at something. I focus on her. I think it’s a photograph. Then she puts it away and starts walking up the street. I watch her, but really I’m trying to figure out what’s annoying me. There’s something but I can’t find it.

  And then I have this flash. I always get this flash. It’s like a bit of a memory. I see a blanket. But it’s not a blanket, not like Caretaker’s blankets. It’s something else. It’s black.

  I don’t know what it means, though.

  I find the school girls again and follow them crossing the road. They’re wearing navy jackets that have pictures on the top-left pocket. Four tiny symbols between the arms of a red cross. I recognize it. I remember it.

  I lower the binoculars and try to remember better. A little navy jacket with a red cross on the pocket, hanging on a hook inside Gran’s doorway. In her house that was warm and smelled of toast and soap and burning coal. And Gran would help me put the jacket on and give me my pink lunchbox and we’d walk out onto the street and down the road. To school.

  ‘Those girls go to the school with the concrete yard with the pond in the corner! My school!’ I almost drop the binoculars over the wall trying to find the girls again. ‘That’s right near Gran’s house!’

  But they’re gone. I’m about to run to the other side of the roof when, below me, I see two men getting out of a van. They’re putting on neon yellow jackets and white plastic hats.

  The binoculars crash onto the roof.

  The men are standing beside each other and they’re talking. They lean their heads back and they look right up here. I duck down real quick and hide behind the wall.

  What are they doing?

  I lift myself up a little so I can see over the wall. They have moved. They are right outside the door of the mill. They are trying to open it.

  ‘Please don’t,’ I whisper.

  But Caretaker must have forgotten to lock it when he went out, cos they step inside and disappear. They are in my Castle!

  The Authorities are here. They’re here. In my home.

  I’m sprinting across the roof. It must’ve been Monkey Man and Scarecrow – they must’ve told the Authorities about me.

  I run as fast as I can down the ladder and across the sky-bridge and down the stairs of the mill. I want to yell out for Ma, but I know they are in here and they’ll hear me.

  I have to find her before they do.

  Or before they find me.

  I turn the corner to the second floor. I see Ma in front of me. She’s standing at the door of the bedroom, looking down the stairs. Then she sees me flying towards her. ‘The Authorities!’ I mouth and I run past her into our bedroom and she closes the door quietly and we both push against it with all our might.

  INVASION

  I hear their footsteps on the stairs. Their voices sound real big but I can’t hardly make out what they’re saying. I push hard against the door. So does Ma.

  ‘Any more objections to the planning?’

  ‘It’s a one-hundred-and-fifty-million-euro development. That’ll soon silence any objections.’

  The footsteps are right outside our door. They stop.

  ‘So when are we looking at?’

  ‘Early January, I’d say.’

  Stay quiet. Don’t shake. Don’t breathe too loud.

  There’s a creak. The handle of the door creeps down. They’re trying to get in. I push as hard as I can. Too hard. I slip and my shoes squeak on the floor. They’ve heard me! They’re going to force their way in and they’re going to grab me and they’re going to take me away, and Ma won’t be able to stop them cos they’re too strong and she’s too hungover.

  But then the handle springs back.

  One of the voices says, ‘Locked.’

  I think they’re starting to move away. I can hear their footsteps and they’re talking again, and even though I can’t make out what they’re saying, their voices are getting further away. They must be looking at the dead machines on this floor.

  There is a clanging sound. And a scraping, like something being dragged over the wooden floor. The voices get closer again. I put my hand over my mouth to stop myself from making any noise. They walk past the door and I can hear their footsteps on the stairs and their voices go all muffled and I know they are on the third floor.

  Ma breathes out. She turns her back to the door. She bends her knees and leans forwards.

  ‘Ma!’ I whisper. ‘What do they want?’

  There are footsteps on the stairs again. Ma jumps around and pushes against the door and so do I. The voices get closer.

  ‘. . . structurally unsound. Whole inside will have to go . . .’

  The footsteps go straight past
and down the stairs. I wish there was a statue of the Virgin Mary with a little bowl of holy water at her feet, like the one at Gran’s, so I could run over and put my fingers in it and pray that they leave and that they never come back.

  I hear a voice from outside the window. I run between our beds and stand on my tippy-toes and put my face against the window. I can’t see straight down, not unless I stick my head out. I can only see the stretch by the Silo.

  There’s nothing there, only a bag filled with empty beer cans. Then I see one of the men and he walks over to the bag and he opens it and looks inside and then he throws it away and I hear it rattle.

  Ma’s standing beside me and she’s got a face like she’s in pain. They are her cans. This is her fault. She brought Monkey Man into our Castle. She brought the streets in.

  I turn back to the window. The men are standing shoulder to shoulder. They lean their heads back and look up. I jump back.

  Ma moves too so that she’s in shadow, and she looks down at the men and shakes her head. ‘They’ve seen the kitchen. And the classroom,’ she says. ‘They know.’ She’s quiet for a while and I say nothing. Then she curses and says, ‘Already?’ and she shoves her thumbs into her eyes and shakes her head. After a few seconds, she crosses the room and goes to open the door.

  ‘Don’t, Ma!’ I say but she opens it real quiet and stands on the stairs. I go up behind her. I can hear their voices. I think they’re moving through the basement, so I tiptoe up the stairs as fast and as quiet as I can till I get to the fourth floor, the one with the periscope. I run along the boards by the wall and I make dead sure not to stand on the ones that creak. I crawl across the pipe till I get to the periscope and I stick my ear against it and now I can hear them in the basement and they’re talking to each other.

  ‘Obviously has a few squatters. Reckon they’re still here?’

  ‘Well, if they are, it won’t be for long. Boards are going up after Christmas.’

  The voices get muffled and they disappear. I listen a bit longer and then I crawl across the other pipe to the windows. I see the men opening the doors of their van and taking off their plastic hats and their yellow jackets and throwing them inside. They get back into the van and drive away.