by Mary Hooper
‘Violet’ didn’t seem to want to answer this. The glass started off going to V and we all thought it was going to spell VICTORIA, but instead it moved around a mish-mash of random letters which didn’t mean a thing.
‘We seek to contact someone on the other side,’ Zara said, giving up on the previous question.
I glanced across at Lois, who looked scared half to death.
‘It is the mother of someone here present,’ Zara added, nodding at Lois to speak, while I wondered to myself why, when you were addressing spirits, you had to be so formal.
‘Hello? Hello, Mum,’ Lois said in a frightened whisper. ‘Are you there?’
‘If there is a message for Lois, please speak through the glass,’ Zara instructed the empty air above her head, where the spirits presumably were.
The wine glass circled round a few times, then moved to the B. After that, with us all making big eyes at each other, it quickly became obvious what it was going to say. It spelled out the letters for BE HAPPY LOIS more or less without a pause.
Lois smiled, well pleased with this. ‘That’s nice. And are you happy, Mum?’ she asked.
The glass was moving well now. It answered, WE ARE OF THE WIND, which didn’t make much sense to us, although Zara nodded and said she understood. ‘People on the other side are not like us,’ she said to Lois. ‘Not happy or unhappy. They’re sort of ethereal.’
Lois nodded, intent on the glass. ‘Is there anything else, Mum?’ she asked.
The glass started moving again and although my arm was aching a bit, I tried to keep my touch on it loose. I didn’t think I was pushing it round, though once you kind of knew what it was going to say, it was difficult to stop thinking it towards those letters. GO TOWARDS THE LIGHT, it spelled out, and everyone was very impressed by this.
I wasn’t so much, though, because I knew one of the books which Zara had borrowed from the library had been called Going Towards the Light and it just seemed too much of a coincidence. ‘Are you sure you’re not pushing the glass?’ I asked Zara, but she gave me such a furious look that I wished I hadn’t spoken.
‘Do you have a message for my dad?’ Lois asked next, but then the glass went a bit haywire and started whizzing backwards and forwards like no one’s business, not spelling anything that made sense.
‘I expect some mischievous spirit has come up,’ Zara said. ‘That does sometimes happen.’
‘Has my mum gone now, then?’ Lois asked, disappointed. ‘There were some other things I wanted to ask her.’
Zara nodded. ‘They never stay long.’ She addressed the glass. ‘Is Violet there again now?’
The glass shot to NO.
‘Who is speaking, then?’
I HAVE NO NAME.
Zara said, ‘Have you a message for anyone here?’
YES.
‘Who is the message for?’
The glass hesitated for a moment, and then swung towards E. As soon as it did this I began to feel apprehensive. It was going to be a message for me; I knew it was. But I didn’t want a message. Why couldn’t it speak to one of the others? I tried to make my finger on the glass a little more resistant, so that it wouldn’t go to the rest of the letters in my name, but that didn’t work and of course it went on to the letters L L A.
Zara nodded to me. ‘Ella. Ask what the message is.’
‘What is the message?’ I asked dutifully, and the minute I said that the glass seemed to go mad. While I watched, horrified, willing it not to, it went straight to the letters K I L L one after the other, shooting across the table as if it was demented.
It paused, then went to the letters E and R. KILLER.
‘Killer,’ Zara said in a strange voice. ‘Who is a killer? Is it Ella?’
‘Of course I’m not a killer!’ I said, and Poppy gave a high-pitched giggle.
We all still had our fingers on the glass and it started moving again. HIM, it said.
Zara looked at me and silently mouthed, ‘Your dad.’
‘No!’ I said.
Zara addressed the glass. ‘How did he kill?’ she said.
I gave a cry of protest – I didn’t want to hear any more – and the glass whizzed across the table, making those on the other side of it stretch out their arms to the full. It then kind of skidded to a stop, overturned and crashed on to the floor, where it broke.
I stared around, feeling sick and shaky, as if I’d been punched in the stomach.
There was a long silence when all we could hear was the candles, puttering and flickering. ‘What did that all mean?’ Poppy said eventually.
‘Wasn’t that weird …’ Sky said shakily.
There was another moment’s silence. ‘Ladies,’ Zara said then, rather grandly, ‘the seance is over.’
Chapter Twelve
I’d seen the others out – shaken and quiet, they’d hardly said goodbye – and then, not wanting to go back upstairs, had gone into the sitting room. Zara had come down a few moments later and, without saying anything about what had happened, sat on the sofa and put the TV on. There was some pop star competition on and she was watching it while I just stared at the screen, still shaking.
Killer. Killer. Killer.
The word went through my head. Why had it said that? It didn’t really mean that, surely? Not that he’d actually killed someone. Not my dad …
‘Wow! Look at him!’ Zara said, as a blond guy came on the TV and started chatting to the judges. ‘He ought to win on looks alone.’
I looked, but couldn’t see him.
Killer.
How could she just sit there, pretending nothing had happened? Pretending that she hadn’t just said what she had?
I waited until another face appeared on the TV screen. ‘It’s not really true about my dad, is it?’ I said, and my breath was all fluttery in my throat and I could hear my heartbeat thudding through my ears. ‘You didn’t mean it.’
‘What?’ She frowned at me, looking annoyed at being distracted from the screen. ‘I dunno.’
‘But you can’t just say something like that …’
‘It wasn’t me who said it.’
‘Well, it was sort of you, wasn’t it?’
‘I’m just the medium.’
‘Yeah, right.’
She looked at me with her head on one side. ‘And you know what they say,’ she added, sounding so cocky and smug that I almost hated her. ‘Don’t shoot the messenger!’
I searched my mind for what I could say to get through to her. ‘Look,’ I said desperately. ‘You can’t just leave it like this. I’ve got to know more.’
She was staring at the TV screen now, watching the blond guy. ‘You saw what happened when I tried to ask the spirit something else – everything went mad. And quite honestly, I don’t want to talk about it any more. The spirits don’t like people questioning what they say. You just have to try and take it on board.’
‘What – you tell me my dad’s a killer and I just have to live with that?’
She shrugged.
‘He can’t be. He’s just an ordinary bloke.’
‘I bet murderers’ families always say that,’ she said, and I really did hate her then. ‘I mean, I told you ages ago that there was something strange … that he had some dark secret, didn’t I?’
‘Yeah, but I thought you meant he was a gambler or drinker or something. Nothing like that. That he’d … he’d …’
While I was struggling with the words, she was watching the screen where the blond guy was dancing. She suddenly clapped her hands. ‘Look at him! Talk about fit!’
‘I mean, my dad’s really nice,’ I said, and my eyes suddenly filled with tears, thinking of times when he’d been nice, or thoughtful, or kind. I knew he was a silly old buffer sometimes, but mainly, mostly, he was OK. And he certainly wasn’t, couldn’t be …
‘He’s not always nice,’ she said sharply. ‘He’s had a few digs at me over the years. Always having goes at me, he is.’
‘Yeah, but he doesn
’t mean it,’ I said uneasily. ‘Half the time he just thinks he’s being funny.’
‘Oh. Ha ha. Remind me to laugh,’ she said bitterly. ‘D’you remember last Christmas? I came round one afternoon and he wouldn’t let me in! He said you had relatives round and that Christmas was a family time.’
I felt myself flushing. She’d come round on Boxing Day. Boxing Day! We’d been having tea and Dad wouldn’t let her in. ‘It wasn’t anything about you, it was just that my gran was here and she’s a bit dippy.’
‘No, it wasn’t that, it was because he thought I might spoil your lovely little family gathering,’ she said. ‘You and your brother, your mum and dad and dear old granny. The perfect family!’
‘No families are perfect –’ I began, but she cut across me.
‘Oh, don’t give me any of that crap. You don’t know anything about other people’s families.’
She went back to staring at the screen and I didn’t speak for ages, thinking to myself that I wished – really wished – we hadn’t ever started anything. I was also thinking that Zara had changed. In fact, everything had changed: the things we did, the other girls, life in general … nothing was as nice as it had been, even though we were now that very thing we’d strived to be: popular.
And what was going to happen now? How could I carry on being best friends with the girl who’d practically accused my dad of being a murderer? What were the other girls going to say to me about it on Monday? And had there really been some sort of message from the other side, or had she just made everything up?
‘Are you really psychic?’ I asked desperately.
‘Of course I am. What more proof d’you need?’
‘But at the beginning you said you weren’t.’
‘That was just because I didn’t want to scare you off. I thought you’d be too much of a wimp to do stuff otherwise.’
‘So if you are, why can’t you find out anything else? Why can’t you tell me the whole story about my dad?’
She didn’t say anything.
‘I don’t believe you!’ I said suddenly. It was all I had, really. My last defence. ‘I don’t believe you’re really psychic.’
‘What?’ she said irritably.
‘I think you’ve made up the whole thing. You’re just having a laugh.’
She glanced at me. ‘If that’s what you want to believe,’ she said carelessly. ‘If it’s easier for you to believe that – OK.’
‘You said you were going to pretend to be psychic, and that’s what you’ve done.’
‘OK, Miss Knowall, how could I have made all that up?’ she said. ‘There’s no way that anyone could have found out all the things that I have.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know how, but I’m not going to believe you ever again.’
She didn’t say anything and I felt desperate to provoke a reaction from her. How could she just sit there as if nothing had happened?
‘I’m not going to believe anything else that you say – and I don’t want to be your friend any more!’
‘OK, then,’ she said, and she stood up. I thought she was leaving but she went towards the patio window instead. ‘I’ll tell you all about your dad, shall I? I’ll show you.’
I shrank back from her, horrified.
‘We have to go outside for that,’ she said, nodding towards the windows on to the garden. ‘Outside to where he buried the body.’
‘No!’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Your dad put her in the garden.’
I stared at her speechlessly. It was like being in a dream. We’d just been messing around and suddenly it had all gone wrong. Horribly, wickedly wrong.
She drew the curtains open and slid the glass door across. As I got up from the sofa a blast of wind from outside caught me and made me shiver, but it was a fresh kind of cold … not like the frightening, sickening shivers running through my body.
‘Whereabouts are we going?’ I stammered.
She didn’t reply, just stepped through the windows and out on to the patio. I followed her, thinking – a bit hysterically – of the soaps. On TV people were being buried under patios on a regular basis.
Not in real life, though.
Not really.
She crossed the patio with only the light from the full moon to see by and I followed her on to the lawn. Further down the garden we passed our garden furniture, wrapped in plastic sheeting for the winter and forming strange, surreal shapes, and then came to the flower beds and the shed. Beyond this were the dark fir trees of the wood, swaying now in the wind, stretching back into the darkness.
‘Where are you going?’
She stopped. ‘I’m not quite sure. She’s around here somewhere, though.’ She shot a look at me. ‘The person your dad buried is here.’
I tugged at her arm. ‘No, she’s not!’ I cried. ‘Stop it!’
She shrugged, her face impassive in the moonlight. ‘You said you wanted to know.’
I started crying. She didn’t react, and when I looked at her she had her eyes shut.
‘Someone’s near,’ she said. ‘I feel a spirit presence very close.’
I couldn’t say anything, just kept crying.
‘Someone from the spirit world is with us,’ she said, holding her arms up to the sky. ‘He buried her here under the trees …’
‘No!’ I sobbed.
‘She’s close by … very close. Shut your eyes, Ella. You can feel her near us, can’t you? Her spirit is walking by …her shadow is touching us.’ She sounded as if she was in a trance now, far away. ‘I hear her voice calling to us from the other side …’
‘No, there’s nothing here! Nothing! You’re making it all up!’ I felt that if I could deny it, deny it all along the way, then it wouldn’t be true.
Zara was mad. She had to be.
Because if she wasn’t mad …
‘If we stay here until midnight we’ll see her!’ Zara said. She began to laugh. ‘The witching hour of midnight when the graves give up their dead …’
As I stared at her, horrified, I heard a car pulling up on our gravel drive. Mum and Dad were back from their dinner.
The change in Zara was instantaneous. She became brisk, matter-of-fact. ‘Well, here they are and you can ask your dad yourself. Ask him about the body in the woods,’ she said, beginning to walk away.
‘No!’ I tried to grab hold of her arm. ‘You’re not going!’
She began to run across the garden but I was after her, calling her to stop. She ran up the garden and tried to get out of the side gate and on to the road, but I was with her all the way, hanging on to her, telling her she had to come back and face my dad; tell him what she’d told me.
As we struggled by the side gate, Mum must have come through the house and seen the windows open. I saw her appear on the patio, straining to see what was going on outside.
‘Ella!’ she called. ‘Is that you? What are you doing out there?’
I gripped Zara’s arm more tightly. ‘You’re not going!’ I said between gritted teeth.
‘Let go of me!’ Zara wriggled and squirmed to get her arm away but there was no way I was letting go. She was taller than me, and a bit heftier, but she wasn’t getting away.
‘What are you doing?’ Mum called again.
Heaving, I pulled Zara closer to the house.
‘Is that Zara with you?’ Mum asked. ‘Whatever’s going on?’
Zara suddenly went limp and unresistant. Maybe she’d realised that I wasn’t going to let her get away. She allowed herself to be led into the sitting room where Mum stood wearing her best black dress with high heels and dangling earrings. She frowned at the mud on our shoes.
‘What is it?’ she said. ‘What on earth have you two been doing out there in the cold?’
‘Wait,’ I said, puffing, and I pointed towards the front door to indicate that we’d wait for Dad, who could be heard putting the car in the garage. ‘Wait a minute.’
‘You’re getting mud all over the carpet
,’ Mum said, and I just stared at her. As if that sort of thing mattered now.
It seemed to take for ever for Dad to come into the room, and when he did he just looked at us grouped in front of him like some sort of tableau, and stopped dead.
‘What’s all this about?’
‘Zara’s got something to say to you,’ I said.
‘I haven’t,’ Zara said, very composed. ‘I haven’t got anything to say. This is your problem, not mine.’
There was a moment’s silence. Just a tiny moment, but it felt to me that everything was balanced and waiting. I could have laughed then, said it was nothing and lived with it, or I could have gone on.
And I went on.
‘Zara said … Zara told me that you’d killed someone, Dad.’
Dad’s face showed horror, then disbelief and amazement.
‘She told me that you’d killed someone and put them in the garden.’
‘No!’ Mum cried. ‘What a wicked thing to say. Why ever should she make up something like that?’
Dad walked over to Zara and, gripping her arm, turned her round to face him.
‘Ow!’ she said. ‘Let me go.’
‘Not until we’ve cleared this up. This is not only ridiculous but also a very serious accusation.’
Zara compressed her lips and Dad shook her arm as if to make her talk. Eventually she said, ‘It was just for a laugh.’
‘And one which I don’t find at all funny,’ he said. ‘Would you like to come down to the police station and repeat it?’
‘I was just … just messing around,’ she said. ‘Can’t you take a joke?’
‘A joke?’ Mum asked. She appealed to me. ‘Why would she say something like that?’
I hesitated. ‘She … we had a seance – you know, sitting round in a circle with your fingers on a glass. It said some stuff to the other girls, and then it said that Dad was a killer.’ I glanced at Zara, who actually looked as if she was bored by the whole thing. ‘And then we went out into the garden and she said you’d buried someone out there in the woods and their spirit was nearby.’
Mum gave a little scream, open-mouthed, gasping, and when I looked at Dad he’d gone white.
It was then that I felt really scared. ‘What?!’ I asked, beginning to tremble. ‘Is … is it true, then?’