DEAD GOOD

by Cooper, D A

  Of course Davey’s delighted.

  ‘Having fun then?’ Dad crunches irritably over the cereal as he takes a shopping bag to the worktop.

  My face is red hot. I am furious. But I probably look more guilty than angry. Typical. Just typical! Not only do we seem to have a ghost but we have one with a sense of humour. Brilliant.

  ‘Davey, go and fetch the dustpan and brush will you, under the sink?’ mum ruffles his hair like he’s completely innocent in all this. He drops off his chair and runs to the under-sink cupboard as she rounds on me. ‘Madeline, perhaps you’d like to explain why you just did that?’ and before I can even think of a reasonable reply, she carries on: ‘or perhaps I could answer that for you, eh?’

  Oh god – yes please I think.

  ‘We already know how unhappy you are about being here, lovey,’ she starts off nicely. ‘But we don’t need you to make it ten times worse. Last night was bad enough…’ she actually makes this sound like the whole nightmarish episode was my fault! ‘We have enough to contend with your father being out of work and a family to support,’ she continues. ‘Is it really too much to ask that you simply try to get along and muck in with the rest of us and take each day at a time and try to work with us instead of against us? Hmm? Maddie? Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  Wait. Is she – are they really saying they’ve decided to blame ME for all this lunacy?

  My face is still red hot. How can I tell her that I didn’t do this? Or all that stuff last night? I can see that the evidence against me is currently overwhelming, but… well…. Davey was sitting on his chair at the table and I was standing in the middle of the room. There are choco pops in my hair and all over the floor of the kitchen. Okay, I’ll just have to be honest…

  ‘But I didn’t do this…’ I start. Knowing exactly what I must sound like. Some stereotypical teenager in denial.

  ‘You… what?’ Dad looks up from where he’s bent down with Davey and starts to stand up.

  Mum puts her palm out to stop him from going off on one and I take a deep breath.

  ‘But don’t you see? I can’t have done this!’ I tell them.

  My mum’s face is a picture.

  ‘Go on then,’ she says, folding her arms angrily. ‘Enlighten us.’

  ‘Well… okay,’ I try and control my breathing so my argument comes out properly. ‘Why? I mean why would I just tip a whole box of cereal over my head?’

  The room is silent.

  ‘I mean… well, that’d make me just… just… stupid!’

  The room is still silent. And no one is moving. I’m actually starting to think that we’ve all been frozen in time or something by this ghost with a sense of humour when Dad finally stands up with his broom and walks over to me. My heart races. Either he’s going to send me to my room or he’s going to take me in his arms and tell me everything’s going to be alright.

  ‘Why don’t you go and see Amber, eh?’ he smiles blankly.

  Okay, I wasn’t expecting that, I have to admit. But yeah, that sounds like a good move to be honest. It’ll get me away from this shit-hole, mad house where nobody believes a word I say and I can tell her about these weird things that have happened here. And she’s always got an idea. And it’ll be nice to see her – a bit of sanity in this mad world. A bit of normality.

  ‘Oh. Okay then. Yeah. Thanks,’ I say smiling back. ‘I’ll just go and…’

  I start to walk towards the stairs. I have to brush these chocolate bits out of my hair first and then grab my…

  ‘Now, Madeline,’ Dad says – a bit scarily if you ask me. ‘Just. Go. Now.’

  ‘But I need to get rid of this….’ I start. However the look on his face tells me he’s not going to let me do anything other than walk out of the back door – and right now. He probably wishes I’d do it sooner rather than later. I can always borrow Amber’s brush when I get to her house.

  I swallow.

  ‘Okay.’ I agree. Then grab my bag and leave.

  seven

  ‘Seriously, Amb, there’s something really weird going on at that place. No bloody wonder it’s been empty for years – I think it’s haunted!’

  I’m sitting in Amber’s beautiful bedroom. Like I’ve been doing ever since we met at primary school when we were four and a half. It’s a little piece of paradise here compared with the shittiness of the house I’ve just left. I still can’t believe I actually live there – that I’m actually expected to live there. Especially now. There’s probably a law against forcing children to live under haunted conditions. I bet there is. I am suddenly so cross with myself for not having remembered to find Gordon effing Brown’s e-mail address and try to make myself remember to do this when I get back ho… I mean to that place.

  ‘So tell me again what’s happened!’ Amber pleads, tugging at my hair with her brush. ‘Eeew – there’s some proper crap stuck in here, Maddie – what cereal did you say it was?’

  ‘Just choco pops… that’s all,’ I wince as she pulls my hair hard. ‘OWww!’

  ‘Sorry – that was a sticky bit. There. All better. See?’

  Amber hands me her jewelled mirror and I twist my head one way and then the other to make sure there’re no bits left on my head. I seriously cannot believe what happened earlier. It’s no wonder Amber’s already asked me to repeat it twice. She probably thinks I’m a nutter. See? I knew this would happen. Didn’t I say once news got out that Davey had an invisible friend, then we’d all be labelled with the ‘Nutter’ tag? I did. The thing is, it looks like I’ve actually stuck the label on myself – with the help of the clever funny ghost of course. Not only has it made me look like a total psycho in front of my parents but now it might make me look even stupider in front of my best friend. I just hope Amber loves me and believes in me as much as she says she does. After all, we’ve made a friendship pact. So she should.

  ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘First Davey tells me I’m sitting on something called Mia…’

  ‘Someone you mean,’ Amber wriggles with glee. ‘Someone – God, this is so exciting!’

  ‘Okay then,’ I frown back. ‘Someone called Mia. And then the whole house just came to LIFE last night – especially the kitchen - and then Davey sees see some kind of figure walk through the wall of my bedr-’

  ‘Oooh, oooh and what about the figure on the landing?’ Amber interrupts, moving closer to me on the bed, her eyes wide. ‘Do you think it might have been one of the bodies you saw later on? Didn’t you say it felt like there was someone watching you?’

  The way she says someone watching you is a little freaky. If she’s trying to scare me she needn’t bother. I was there, remember? I’m the one this stuff’s happening to. Or at least I’m in the place where it’s happening. She actually seems to be enjoying this. She bloody well wouldn’t if she had to live with it!

  ‘Or maybe she would.’ A voice in my head says.

  Wait. Was that a voice in my head? My thoughts are getting really loud lately if it was.

  ‘Yeah - she’d love it!’ The voice says again.

  I spin on the bed and Amber grins at me clutching my arm. ‘What?’ she says, twisting her head with me to see what I’m looking for. I swallow. I try to think. I try to think really, really loudly so that I can hear my own thoughts and compare them with the voice I thought I thought was in my head just now. Oh God I’m going mad. I’m starting to become schizophrenic. I’m going to go slowly insane. I’m hearing voices and…

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with you.’ The voice says. ‘Although I couldn’t say the same about your friend here.’

  I spin and stand at the same time; I must look as if something’s electrocuted me. Amber is all eyes and open-mouthed.

  ‘What?’ she whispers excitedly. ‘What’s happened?’

  I shake my head and carry on turning around to see where the voice is coming from. I must look totally demented.

  ‘Nothing’s happened,’ I tell her. ‘I just… felt a bit… um… did you hear anything? J
ust then?’

  ‘Just then, when?’ Amber beams and bounces up and down on her bed. Whatever, whoever just said she’d love this; it would seem they were telling the truth. She does look like she’s enjoying it.

  ‘Did you hear an…um… voice?’ I say, hardly able to believe I’m actually asking her this. This is me here – Miss Sensible, Practical Capricornian who can scientifically explain the non-existence of God and … ghosts.. and…

  ‘Go on then!’ the voice says, teasingly. ‘Explain away, I’m listening!’

  My head goes cold. The hairs on my arms and neck hurt with the pain of standing so much on end and I think I might faint. I move back towards the bed and sit down again. Amber bounces forward towards me.

  ‘Did you hear something?’ she says delightedly. ‘Who was it? What did they say? Is it a little girl? Is it Mia? Is she trapped between this world and the next? Is she trying to find her way into the light? Does she want us to help her find her way into heaven or has she forgotten something? Something she needs before she can move on? Maddie, talk to me – tell me what we need to do to save this poor little girl from living in limbo – I’ve heard it’s a horrible place to be trapped in!’

  Jeez, where did she get all this crap from? She sounds like something out of a horror film – a bad horror film where the white haired weird old lady is holding hands with a load of others round a table and the candelabra’s floating in the air and ectoplasm is vomiting out of her mouth. Of course it’s all smoke and mirrors, I’ve seen them exposed.

  ‘Actually it’s not always,’ the voice laughs. ‘Although I have to agree that your friend here watches far too many bad films.’

  The voice is strangely calming as I listen properly to it and now I’ve heard it a few times. And it’s not a little girl’s voice. It’s a boy’s voice. No - a man’s – maybe a young man’s…

  ‘Eighteen in November.’ he says matter-of-factly.

  I nod my understanding but it’s very difficult, especially when you can’t see who it is you’re nodding at. To. It’s like hearing a voice in a fog.

  ‘Tell me, tell me, tell me!’ Amber is insistent. She’s clasped both my hands now like some crazed lunatic who needs a shot of something to calm her down.

  The disembodied voice chuckles again in front of me and I’m very tempted to join him. Amber is getting scarily carried away with all this supernatural shit.

  ‘Uuu-ummm… Maddie said a swear word!’ he sings into my right ear. ‘Maddie said a swear word!’ My mouth forms a half- grin as I remember silencing poor Davey last night. A ghost is making me smile. Now this I didn’t expect.

  ‘Was that you?’ I say into the room. And then kick myself about a second after it’s left my stupid mouth.

  ‘Was what me?’ Amber squeaks. ‘What Maddie? What? Was what me? What do you think you heard?’ Amber is squeezing my hands so hard I think she’s cut off my circulation. I try to prise my fingers out from her grasp and she grabs them back as soon as they’re out.

  ‘Amber, bloody well let go, will you? You’re hurting me!’ I pull my hands away from hers and rub my fingers furiously. ‘Jeez! What is up with you?’ I frown angrily.

  ‘What’s up with me?’ she says a little bit quieter now. ‘What’s up with me? Maddie, don’t you see what’s happening? Can’t you see what’s going on? ‘

  I shake my head. Nope. I can’t.

  ‘You have been chosen,’ she says. Seriously. She says I’ve been chosen. Like she’s some kind of Messenger from Other Parts and suddenly I’m wondering if I ever really knew this girl at all. She’s more of a nutter than I was worried I was earlier on. Chosen? Is she mad?

  ‘Not all mad.’ The boy says. ‘She’s got some redeeming qualities although common sense isn’t her greatest one I have to say.’ He even has the cheek to snort derisorily at the end of his declaration of my friend’s insanity.

  I ignore him although I do think he has a point.

  ‘Chosen.’ I repeat.

  ‘Cho…sen..’ I hear a sarcastic echo.

  ‘Chosen.’ she repeats back at me and I think if I don’t soon change the word, then we’ll both be sitting here on her bed chanting like a couple of mad old mental patients in an asylum for … well, mad old mental patients.

  ‘Ok - Explain.’ I encourage her and she grips my hands back again deliriously.

  An hour later Amber has just about rehashed all the maddest, most mental, most ridiculous cliché’s I’ve ever heard in every supernatural film I’ve ever seen. Not including The Exorcist – which I’m proud to report I still haven’t seen because it’s an Eighteen and mum and dad said it freaked them out when they saw it so I think I can wait for that one. Oh, and the original Nightmare on Elm Street. Mum reckons if I’m anything like her then I won’t sleep for a week if I watch that and it could have disastrous effects on my school work. Of course I’ve watched the other Nightmare’s but they’re just stupid. Not the least bit scary. I don’t know why they bother making sequels if they’re not going to be as good as the first one. Look at the ‘Final Destination’s. You have to admit the first one was the best and the rest just got stupider and stupider – surely?

  ‘More stupid, you mean.’ The voice corrects me.

  I refuse to be picked up on my English by a ghost but feel I’m in no position to argue – especially with mad-Amber sitting right in front of me. If she knew I was having an -okay, one-sided, but hey - conversation with a ghost, she’d want to, I don’t know – posses my body or something. She’d want to experience what I’m experiencing. Don’t you think? I think so. Look at her – she’s cracked.

  ‘So you have to teach them not to be scared of the light…’ she’s saying now. ‘You have to connect with them and lead the way for them – they’re innocent in death – everyone is innocent in death….’ She’s rambling and I think I switched off ages ago. I’ve started to dwell on how lovely her curtains are and how I wish I still had a nice thick carpet like hers and how I long for double glazing and not those disgusting, draughty old windows which are going to be crap at keeping us warm in winter. We’ll freeze. And then Gordon effing Brown will have to do something about our plight – he’ll have to!

  ‘Uuu-ummm! Maddie said a swear word! Maddie said a swear word!....’ the voice’s laughing right in front of me.

  I swear, if I could see him right now I’d punch him in the face.

  And then I do.

  eight

  Not punch him in the face. No, I mean I see him. Right here. Right now. And he’s still laughing at me. It’s weird. I know I’m here, in Amber’s pink and frilly and – if you ask me, although I’d never tell her to her face – completely over the top Barbie-eque bedroom… but…

  ‘Ve-ry Barbie, isn’t it?’ His grin broadens.

  Hang on a minute – can he hear everything I’m bloody well thinking? Surely that’s not right? It’s not fair anyway – how dare he? Is nothing sacred? Does that mean I’m going to have to think of things like brick walls and empty rooms if I want some privacy from now on? Hmm?

  ‘Pretty much, yeah,’ he laughs on. ‘Although I do have a sense of decency about me, so there’s no need to be too concerned.’

  I stare at the very vague face which is so close to mine I probably could punch it – if I wanted to.

  ‘Try it.’ He goads, widening his deeper-but-still-pale eyes. ‘Go on.’

  Yeah right. Like that wouldn’t totally freak Amber out or make me look like an utter mental case in front of her. If I wanted a one-way ticket to idiot-land then that’s exactly what I should do. So I don’t. I won’t.

  He laughs. He’s got a nice laugh actually, not thuggish and dense like some boys laugh, but kinda cute. I gulp and feel the beginnings of a flush. Oh crap, he heard that, right?

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Um… Amber…’ I start, wondering where I’m going to go with this. ‘I think I should probably be getting back home… I mean back to the new place... I mean place – it’s not new – it’s a total s
hit-hole of course, but I should probably be going. Mum wants me to start making the dinner. So I should…’

  Now Amber’s laughing. ‘Since when have you ever made dinner?’ she shrieks. Okay, deep breath - let’s all gang up on Madeline Preston today then, shall we? ‘You wouldn’t know how to boil a kettle if it had a...a big luminous on-off switch that …played music when your hand went near it… or something.’ She trails off.