‘There must be one more to find,’ he said. But, when Rosie started coughing, Daniel took hold of her greasy white fingers and held them until she had stopped. ‘Let’s take a break,’ he said and led her downstairs.
He dragged the mattress they had found into a room that was full of the most sunshine.
They sat for some time – in what might have once been a dining room – watching the golden spokes of sunlight drop lower through the windows as the day drew on. The house seemed to grow colder little by little, like some newly dead creature with the heat fading from it. Daniel dozed and when he woke up a shaft of sunlight had lanced the wall beside him, like a spear just dodged.
Rosie slept too, on the mattress, stretching her legs out in front of her when she woke up. It seemed to Daniel that she was disintegrating when she moved, sending up little streamers of dust all around her.
‘What are you thinking about?’
‘Nothing,’ he replied, trying to flush the thought about her from his mind.
‘Liar. You’re going red.’
‘I was thinking about my dad. That I haven’t been to see him today.’
Rosie picked out a tiny green burr from her hair and studied it, rolling it between her finger and thumb, wishing she had found the seed for her tumour. ‘Would talking about him help?’
Daniel sighed. ‘I’m not sure it would.’
Rosie flicked the green burr away and nodded. ‘You’re right.’ She drew up her legs and hugged her knees, resting her chin in the groove between them. ‘Tell me something funny instead.’
Daniel looked at her to see if she was serious. And she was. Nodding at him to go ahead.
‘You know what people say behind my back at school? That I’m the person in the year least likely to succeed, that I won’t be anybody at all. Ever.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘Ask Bennett. It’s written on the wall of the ground-floor bogs if you don’t believe me. Last cubicle down. On the left-hand wall. Someone took a crap and thought of me.’
‘Daniel,’ deadpanned Rosie. ‘That’s hila-rious.’
‘It’s the best I could do.’
‘OK then, get this. My dad is officially an asshole. We’re in debt up to here.’ And she put her hand above her head, ‘mortgaged to the hilt because of some cowboy investment that went wrong. So now, even though he’s a doctor, my mum works three jobs to pay the bills and put enough food on the table. It means I feel guilty every time I need something new to wear, which is every few months because it seems like somebody’s still putting Miracle-Gro in my socks or shoes or my bra. All our family manages to do is get by. We survive.’
‘So do lots of people, Rosie.’
‘Yeah, but the point is we never used to have to.’
Daniel nodded. ‘Well that, Rosie . . . is . . . hyst-eri-cal.’
Rosie stared at him. Her eyes blazed as she tried to keep a straight face, but she couldn’t and ended up punching the mattress to let it all out. ‘Do you think it’s supposed to be this hard?’ she asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Do you think we’ve been doing something wrong?’
Daniel shrugged. ‘I don’t think it’s us.’
‘Then why’s it so damn tough?’
Daniel picked at a blackened knot in the floorboard beside him. ‘Maybe that’s not the right question.’ He looked up at Rosie and shrugged. ‘One of the doctors told me I should only be thinking about the “what” not the “why” when we were talking about dad. He said I should focus on figuring out who I want to be, whatever happens, because it’s impossible to know why things turn out the way they do.’
And Rosie thought about that.
‘So who do you want to be, Daniel?’ she asked eventually.
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I think I’m still figuring it out. I guess I’m waiting to see what happens next.’ He rubbed his face because he didn’t want to cry. But he missed wiping away a tear and it splashed down on to the front of his hoodie, darkening over his heart. ‘But I do know I don’t want to be left on my own. That I don’t want Dad to leave me here all by myself.’
‘You won’t be alone,’ said Rosie. ‘There’s Bennett. There’s your aunt. And I’ll be here too. I promise.’ He watched her stand up and then slump down beside him, laying her head on his shoulder.
When she looked up at him, he felt goosebumps flicker on his arms and legs. Her eyes were shining like wet pebbles. She smelt of apples and sunshine and talc and dust. In the gloaming, her face seemed to be moving and breaking apart and he gripped her harder, fearful she might fade away. ‘You can’t make a promise like that, can you? That you’ll be here.’
She kissed him on his cheek and snuggled in close. ‘No, you’re right, I can’t. But I promise I’ll stay with you for as long as the world lets me.’
‘It’s more than that, Rosie. You need to make sure you stay here to do all the things you want to in your life.’
They held on tight to each other in silence for some time, as the grainy evening fell around them like a curtain being lowered.
56
Gradually, the walls and the floor turned paper-white in the moonlight. The window frames looked like they were made from bone.
Tiny scutterings inside the walls set their eyes wandering, but they saw nothing out of the ordinary and they sat musing on what the noises might be, trying not to let their imaginations catch fire. The night brought out something ancient in them, and they heard it in their breathing and felt it on their skin, like electricity, making them charged and alert.
‘Are you scared?’ whispered Rosie eventually.
‘Yes,’ said Daniel, staring into the dark places hiding from the moon to try and see if anything was there.
‘More scared than you are of Mason?’
‘No. I want to stay. We need to find that flask. Give Mason what he wants and get him out of our lives for good.’
‘Yes,’ said Rosie. ‘We certainly both want that.’
He opened the silver-plated box lying on the floor beside them and stared at the gold wedding band and the finger and the lock of hair in their separate compartments, all hooked to the clasp on the underside of the lid with black, woolly twine. Daniel kept looking at them for some time in the moonlight. But he shut the lid eventually.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I don’t remember anything.’
Rosie sat up and looked at him and smiled. And then she closed her eyes.
When Daniel started to feel little pricks of pain in his chest, he knew that Rosie was trying to make the fit again. ‘Rosie, be careful,’ he said. ‘Please. Let’s try looking for the last symbol instead.’
But her face twitched and jerked and he wasn’t sure she could hear him.
When the pain rang clean in his chest like a bell, he gasped and tried to move his arms to shake Rosie out of her trance. But they were turning numb. There was no strength in them at all. ‘Rosie!’ But his voice was so pitiful that he could barely hear it himself.
He started to hear the ticking sound inside his head. Like an alarm clock about to go off. Or a bomb about to explode. He remembered how Lawson’s hand had detonated in a red mist and it scared him so much that he managed to summon all his strength and raised his arms towards Rosie as well as he could.
‘Rosie! Stop!’
When she collapsed forward, he had no strength to catch her and her head cannoned on to the floorboards with a crack.
The pain was gone from him immediately and, as the strength flowed back into his arms, he lifted up her limp body gently. ‘Rosie! Rosie! Wake up! What have you done?’
There was blood coming from her nose and it was thick and dark and velvety. It fell in drops to the floor, splashing into the dust. He checked her hands. Inspected her for any signs of damage. But there were none that he could see.
‘You said you wouldn’t leave,’ said Daniel, rocking her gently. ‘You promised.’
He felt her tense in his arms
and then shudder, her eyes popping wide open as if waking from a terrible dream.
‘Oh, Daniel!’ she gasped as more blood came out of her nose, making her sputter and cough. ‘I saw Lawson. He was here in this room. He was kneeling.’ And she waved a hand towards the hearth.
‘Rosie, what did you do? What’s happened?’
She put her hands to her mouth as the blood ran down into it from her nose and she wiped it away. ‘I’m OK. I’m still here. I pushed as far as I dared. I stopped when I heard your voice. I’m OK. Go and look over there.’ She pointed at the hearth again. ‘Lawson was there. I’m sure of it.’
Daniel stood up and knelt down in front of the fireplace, searching for anything that might seem odd or out of place. The moon was shining in through the window behind him and he inspected everything in the hearth by its silvery light. Written beneath the grate on one of the tiles in black pen was another symbol, shining like wet paint in the moonlight. Quickly, he started testing each tile until he found a loose one, which he prised up with his fingernails. A tooth beneath it, a molar with a long tendril of root, attached to a black piece of twine. After plucking it out, he crouched down beside Rosie as she opened the silver box and he placed the tooth into the last empty compartment, hooking it to the clasp on the underside of the lid. When Rosie closed the box, Daniel heard something and looked round, trying to see what was there in the room with them.
‘What?’ asked Rosie.
‘A scratching sound, can’t you hear it?’
Rosie shook her head, her tongue wiggling in the corner of her mouth as she listened harder.
And then they both saw it, a grey column of fine mist rising from a section of the floor. It coalesced slowly into the blurry shape of a head and torso and arms. It was a man of sorts, up to his waist in the floorboards, until he drifted free of them to reveal his whole body. He was hazy. Indistinct. As if fashioned from a delicate silk that was constantly catching in a draught. He stood taller than either Daniel or Rosie, his cloudy grey feet hovering above the floor. The features of his face were blurred, but the eyes were bright blue and watched them keenly.
‘Who are you? Where’s Lawson?’ asked the man in a voice that sounded like dry leaves rattling in the wind. When he moved nearer to Daniel, the boy took a step back.
‘Dead,’ he said quickly.
‘Then what about the flask? Who has it now?’ The man drifted even closer. ‘You should tell me the truth. I can see a lot of things about a person if I want to, much more than when I was alive.’ The blue eyes burned bright in the blurred face. ‘So I already know you didn’t mean to kill Lawson.’ Closer and closer the man came. ‘What else is there, hiding deep down inside you?’
Daniel felt Rosie behind him, her hand clutching hold of his, the fingers clenching tighter.
‘Stay away from us,’ he shouted at the man. But the creature swept forward as if blown by a sharp gust of wind and plunged a blurry arm deep into Daniel’s chest, making the boy gasp.
‘I can’t hurt you,’ the man whispered. ‘There’s no need to be scared of me. Not like Mason.’
Daniel tried to step back, but he seemed fixed to the man, a chill burning steadily colder inside him.
‘Now I see everything.’ And the man laughed and pulled out his arm. ‘If you think Mason’s going to retire when you give him that flask, you’re wrong. He told Lawson the same thing, but he didn’t believe it. Mason uses people then tosses them away like dirty rags. Nobody rats on him because they don’t get the chance. He doesn’t trust anyone. But it keeps him alive, at the top of the pile. He killed me on a whim a few months ago just because I’d done a job for him. Lawson knew better than to trust him. That’s why he put me here to make a deal with me.’ He pointed at the silver box. ‘Lawson knew how to keep a person in the world even after they’d died.’
‘What sort of a deal did he make with you?’ asked Daniel.
‘To draw Mason into a trap you have to be clever. He’s paranoid. Alert to any trick. Lawson knew he’d need me to help him. He’s been waiting for weeks to tell Mason about the flask, winding him tighter and tighter until he wants it so much he’s ready to burst. And I bet he is now. So tell him the flask he so desperately wants is hidden here, that the ghost of Ashwell Lodge is the only one who can reveal it to him. Use the charms that Lawson made. Put them back where they were. Let Mason find them so he can see me. I’ll lead him to a place from which he’ll never return. But bring the flask with you too. I want what Lawson promised me. I’ll only help you if I know you can give me what I want.’
‘Where is it? Where’s the flask?’ asked Daniel.
‘Lawson kept it here. But the last time he came he took it away with him. When he didn’t come back, I thought he’d left me here forever, trapped in this place.’ The man began to drift down into the floor, disappearing from view. ‘If you can find the flask and bring it with you then you can get rid of Mason. It’s the only way to save yourselves from him now.’
57
They pedalled as hard as they could down the driveway, not looking back until the house had vanished round the bend in the road behind them.
Daniel gripped the handlebars, the air whooshing electric around him.
‘Hey!’ shouted Rosie and, when he glanced round and realized she was struggling to keep up, he slowed and waited for her. Eventually, he looked back to see her standing in the road, her hands on the handlebars as if the bike was the only thing keeping her up.
‘I don’t feel so good,’ she said as he pulled up beside her. When he touched her, she was trembling like a baby bird. Blood was coming from her nose again, splashing in three big drops on to the road.
Daniel held her until she had stopped shaking.
‘I’ll walk if you can steer,’ he said, and he made her sit on her bike as he gripped the handlebars and pulled her, his own bike ticking beside him, and her coughing and shaking as the wheels turned.
There were stars in every puddle that they passed.
‘I hate being like this,’ she said.
‘It’s fine.’
‘No it’s not. Nothing is.’
They kept going for some time, not speaking, until Rosie summoned enough strength to say something. ‘He’s not like your father,’ she said. ‘They’re not the same at all. That man was dead. He said so.’
‘Not all of him was.’ When she opened her mouth to say something, Daniel got there first. ‘Do you feel ready to ride a bit more? It’s late and we need to get you home.’ He pointed at Cambridge in front of them, glowing in the distance like some fairy forest. ‘We’ve still got a way to go.’
Rosie nodded. ‘Yes, in a moment. I think I might be able to.’
‘Perfect.’
When Rosie decided she had enough strength to start peddling for herself, they speeded up a little, Daniel keeping close to her, watching her as she wobbled, his heart lurching whenever she did. But they managed to keep going.
‘Daniel, how are we going to find the flask?’ asked Rosie as they cycled down the street towards her house.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Are all of Lawson’s memories really burned out?’
‘I think they are, yes. I can’t find anything inside me at all.’
Rosie braked. Slipped her feet off the pedals on to the road to keep her steady.
‘I can’t make the fit again. Not now. That last time . . . something happened. I’m too scared to try.’
‘We’ll find the flask another way.’
‘What way?’
‘I’ll figure it out. There’s someone I know who might be able to help.’
‘Who?’
‘You don’t know them.’
‘But—’
She stopped when the front door to her house opened and they both realized how loud their voices must have been in the still night.
‘ROSIE?’ It was her mother, backlit by the light in the hallway until she started trotting down the steps to the driveway. ‘Rosie, where have y
ou been?’ Her voice rang out as Rosie hissed at Daniel to go.
‘I’ll find the flask. I will,’ he said and started to peddle.
He heard them arguing in the street. Her mother’s worried voice ringing shrill and excited round the houses. Daniel found it strangely comforting. The love that Rosie’s mother had for her, coming out in all its anger, seemed so clean and pure and undiluted. He stopped and hid in an alley and listened in secret to them arguing until they went inside.
As he cycled slowly, wending through the streets, he pretended that his father was waiting at home for him, ready to be angry too. But he knew there was only his aunt, and however angry she might be it would not feel the same at all because it wouldn’t be his father’s love ringing out at him the way he craved.
When he did reach home, all the lights were off and it shocked him for a moment. He wondered if his aunt was even there. He crept upstairs and saw the line of white light beneath her bedroom door disappear with a tiny click.
Daniel stood there, waiting to see if she might appear. But she didn’t. Suddenly, he wanted her to. He wanted to go and bang on her door and demand it. But after the red surge in him had disappeared he found himself thinking that it was just enough for now that she was there, that the light had been on and then gone off with a simple-sounding click as soon as he had come home. For the first time since she had arrived in his life, he was glad that she was here. It was like a lens had been put in front of his eyes and he was seeing everything more clearly, imagining the world from her point of view and not just his own. He wondered why it had happened. Where it was coming from. He tried to trace his thinking back to its source, stopping when he remembered how Rosie had hugged him and told him he wouldn’t be alone. Somehow, she had unlocked his heart to a love in the world that he hadn’t been able to see before.
But, as he got himself ready for bed, he soon got to thinking about his dad again, feeling guilty for even thinking about his aunt in a way his father wouldn’t have ever wanted him to. So he buried the good thoughts about her deep down inside him until being in the house without his dad felt wrong, just like it had done for the last few days. Not standing in the bathroom brushing his teeth. Not sitting on the loo. Not even standing in his bedroom about to undress.
All Sorts of Possible Page 16