DEAD GOOD

by Cooper, D A

  Whoever they are.

  She’s managed to say nothing controversial all through the roast lunch and now mum’s getting the dessert out of the fridge, I think we’re almost home and dry.

  ‘So, Amber,’ Dad says. ‘How’s school? Anything new to report?’

  He’s rubbish, my dad, at asking anything sensible. It’s always “how’s school?” or “how’s your mum and dad?” or “how’s……” and then I can’t think another thought. Because just as mum kicks the fridge door shut with the back of her foot and balances a trifle over to the table, a familiar figure is revealed from behind the fridge in his cool jeans and funky t-shirt and waves cheekily over at me from where he’s presumably just … um… materialised?

  In fact I’m so surprised at seeing him that I do a silly little finger-wave back like a total arse.

  thirteen

  ‘Maddie?’ I hear a voice like an echo in the distance. ‘Madeline? What’s wrong?’

  My mum is passing her flattened palm across my eyes and back like she’s trying to revive me from deep hypnosis or something. I must look like a complete idiot. I still haven’t moved. When the word “gobsmacked” was invented, this image of me – right now was what they had in mind. I shut my mouth. Everyone around the table is staring at me apart from Davey who is obviously also staring at Ghost boy – I mean Leo. He’s even pulled a chair over to the table now for god’s sake… one of his misty ghostly ones, and is sitting right opposite me next to Amber. Please god, if she really is psychic then let her be a good sport and say nothing to alert mum and dad. Please, please please.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ Amber says frowning and lifting a spoon of jelly to her lips. ‘What’s with your fingers – and why are you…. Oh….wait a minute…..you’ve….ah…oooh…’ she trails off and stares excitedly at the air beside her where I am focussing.

  Clearly she has put two and two together and arrived at the right answer. I blink quickly, try to touch her leg under the table to drag her back to reality and then stare at my hand that bent up and down so, so stupidly just now and rub it with my other hand.

  ‘Ooooh…’ I wince dramatically. ‘Phew, that feels a bit better now!’ I bend the fingers again just like I think (I hope) I did with my stupid wave earlier and pretend to inspect my joints for abnormalities, twisting my fingers round one way and then another and then bending them again as if I’m testing them to study them closer. Leo is beside himself with amusement at my ridiculous bad-acting capabilities. If a ghost could cry with hilarity then he’s pretty much nearly there. Davey joins in as well though, much to the unease of our parents, rocking and giggling and pointing. Oh sweet crap.

  ‘Davey?’ mum spins to stare at him for a change, leaving me able to breathe and glare really really wide-eyed at Amber in an attempt to stop her from saying anything. She mouths back an “o-k-a-y” rather theatrically and I nod my thanks. ‘What is the matter with you two this afternoon?’ mum is frowning incredibly deeply now. ‘First Maddie thinks there’s something wrong with her fingers – and then Davey starts laughing for no reason – are you both going mad or something?’

  She shakes her head and returns to spoon trifle into her mouth, checking cautiously on both of us as she eats, for other signs of psychosis.

  ‘Brilliant!’ Leo laughs, rocking on the chair opposite me. ‘You’re sooooo funny you two, you really are! There’s you,’ he points at me, ‘pretending like there’s nothing wrong and I’m not here or something and making out your poor brother’s seeing things, and then there’s your dippy pal,’ he actually pokes his finger in Amber and she doesn’t flinch once, just lifts her eyes in an annoyed “what?” at me as I watch them sitting together in stunned silence. ‘Amber, here, who thinks she’s got a direct hotline to the Other Side. You lot! You’re all mental!’

  ‘All men-tal!’ Davey pipes up like a ricochet.

  I roll my eyes. Great. Well done laughing boy. Just what we don’t need right now.

  Mum’s eyes fly wide at her baby’s outburst and then she frowns heavily. ‘Wha-? No, no… I didn’t say…’ she pats his chubby hand apologetically, ‘well I didn’t mean that, Davey. I just meant… oh, I don’t know. I just think we’ve all had a very stressful few days and the strain is probably getting to us all,’ she raises her eyes to the ceiling and sighs deeply. Then she looks over at dad who’s been incredibly quiet throughout all of this. ‘Phil?’ she encourages him. ‘Don’t you think?’

  My dad nods his agreement without looking up. ‘Absolutely,’ he says. ‘We’ve all been under a great deal of pressure. It’s no wonder we all think we’ve started seeing things that aren’t there, eh?’ And with that he picks up his plate, goes over to the sink and scrapes his trifle into the bin beside it. I replay his words in my head and Leo even looks a little interested.

  What did he just say? Is he actually now admitting that what happened the other night actually DID happen and wasn’t something I brought on myself just to annoy everybody with?

  ‘Dad?’ I urge. ‘What do you mean “seeing things that aren’t there?”

  He slows slightly as he walks past the table to leave the kitchen and turns to mum in query. She shakes her head. ‘Nothing, love,’ he says. ‘Forget it. We’re all not really being ourselves lately, are we?’ And he leaves the room.

  ‘So,’ says Amber as we sit on my bed later on, ‘do you think your dad can see these ghosts as well then?’ She is thrilled. She seems to believe she’s at the epicentre of a whole new ghost phenomenon and that they’re here because they need us to help them find the light and lead them into to it – away from this land-of-limbo she still insists they’re living in – to find their salvation or somesuch other nonsense.

  This is nothing she hasn’t said already and to be honest I’m getting a bit bored with it now. Leo’s been standing in the corner of my room just observing if that’s what you can call it. He’s been listening, nodding occasionally, laughing a lot, rocking on his heels at some of the frankly ridiculous ideas Amber’s been coming out with, but he hasn’t said a word. He doesn’t need to. And I can categorically confirm that Amber cannot see him. She is not the psychic she believes she is and that really is that.

  ‘Y’know it said in this book that I read….’ She is jabbering on again and I need to stop her before either Leo passes out with laughter or I smack her round the face.

  ‘There was a family who lived here,’ I interrupt her meanderings, stopping her. ‘An Italian family. They died in a fire.’

  Amber looks ever so slightly annoyed.

  ‘What?’ I scowl at her cross-looking face. .

  ‘I kno-ow.’ She says touchily. ‘I was getting to that. ‘I’ve been doing a bit of research myself, haven’t I?’ she sniffs.

  I watch Leo go over and sit on the end of my bed. He’s stopped grinning now and seems to be finally interested in something Amber has to say.

  She plonks herself down right next to him, in fact so close that he even edges away from her slightly. Weird. ‘Apparently it was something to do with an electric fire or something… here…’ she hands me a printout of a newspaper story. ‘It’s really quite sad, don’t you think?’ she tilts her head to emphasise how really quite sad she thinks this is although in reality I think she is still loving it.

  I take the piece of paper from her, not really reading the facts properly because I know them already – after all I’ve had a first-hand account from one of the victims haven’t I? I’m more interested in the photographs that are sitting alongside the piece. There’s Leo’s grandparents smiling together in a restaurant. Then there’s another one of Leo and Mia in the sun. They’re laughing and he’s got his arm around her shoulder. The caption says: “the last photo taken of the children, Leonardo and Mia Gardella”. The word “last” makes me shiver slightly. Mia’s gappy grin in the photograph confirms that she is the girl that Davey was playing a game with in his bedroom the other night and the huge, happy smile on Leo’s face makes me realise that I have, indeed been
chatting with a dead person for the past two days. My heart races and my head feels ready to burst.

  ‘So?’ Amber is quivering with anticipation. ‘He’s gorgeous, isn’t he? I wonder if he went to our school? But … we’d remember someone as fit as him, though, wouldn’t we? Well I mean, I would, certainly…’

  I look up at her, still holding the article. ‘I know…’ I say.

  ‘Well…I’m just saying. So… okay then – shall we make a start?’ she shakes her head of gorgeous ghosts. ‘With some exercising?’

  Exercising, exercising… did we say we’d be doing any…. Oh, wait a minute, she’s talking about exOrcising, isn’t she? Sending Leo and his family into the Light so that they may Pass Over. Oh good grief.

  ‘So… how do you know that this is what we’re supposed to be doing?’ I try. ‘I mean – what if we start doing something that they don’t actually want to happen to them and we make things worse than they already are?’

  ‘Oh, Mads, come on now – how could you get any worse than living in a haunted house?! How could giving them a gentle little push in the right direction make anything any worse than it is already? Surely you don’t want them popping up and spooking you at all hours of the night…’

  ‘And day…’

  ‘See – and the day time as well – crikey…’ she seems to have only just digested this fact, ‘I didn’t realise you could see ghosts during the daytime, I thought that…’

  ‘They’re a little more transparent during the day,’ I recite, ‘the light makes them more difficult to see but you can still hear them the same…’

  ‘Oh. I see…. I see,’ Amber is taking this in and analysing it in her brain. If I’m not mistaken she’s a bit put out that I seem to know so much about our ghosts, considering she’s supposedly already given herself the position of Ghost-know-it-all Supreme Commander in Chief.

  ‘…anyway, I think…I read that somewhere…’ I add as an afterthought. I don’t want her to think I’m as keen as she is with all this haunting mumbo-jumbo.

  ‘So let’s get started, shall we?’ she leaps excitedly from my bed and onto the floor. Which actually is no mean feat, considering, like I’ve said, the room is probably all of about two foot square or something. I don’t know for sure, I haven’t measured precisely but it’s tiny. And shitty. Did I mention it’s…

  ‘Heee-eeey, now! Steady on!’ Leo lurches forward to join Amber on the floor. ‘Don’t forget, this is my house as much as it is yours – probably moreso, considering we lived here for longer than you have. And… er… how long have you lived here again? Oooh, let me work it out – without the aid of a calculator…’ he echoes my thoughts of earlier. ‘What is it now, about thirty six hours or so – give or take?’ He turns away from me and focuses on Amber who is now spreading out playing card-sized pieces of paper in a circle in front of her.

  I scowl at him but take his point. I should stop dissing his home. After all, as he quite rightly just pointed out, he did live here longer – in fact he’s still living here, kind of, isn’t he?

  I ease myself onto the floor to join them. I mean her. Oh, whatever. I sit on the floor in front of the cards which all have letters of the alphabet stuck on the reverse, and then there’re two extra cards which say simply “yes” and “no”.

  ‘Oh goody!’ Leo says sarcastically, rubbing his hands and beaming at me, ‘We’re going to play Happy Families!’

  fourteen

  Nothing has happened for about fifty nine minutes. Unless you count the fact that Leo has stood up, walked about, walked through my bed, out of the room to see what’s happening downstairs because I heard raised voices coming from mum and dad and he must have heard the concerns I was thinking. He’s also popped in to check that Mia’s doing okay with Davey as it’s raining and he’s therefore housebound. They’re fine apparently. They’re playing “tag” which must make Davey look like a total idiot because how must it look if mum and dad see him chasing after nothing all over the place and then running away as if escaping an equally absolute nothing?

  Ah well, what can I do?

  ‘…anything… any noise at all… or just move the glass…’ Amber is repeating for the millionth time.

  ‘Seriously, Amber, perhaps it’s because it’s not a glass?’ I try. ‘Maybe the spirits can’t move plastic beakers – maybe it’s, I don’t know, beneath them or something… shall I go and get a proper “glass”… glass?’

  Amber brushes my comments away with a sharp flick of her hand and does a “zip” across her mouth. Bloody cheek! Who the hell does she think she is anyway? Coming in here with all her stupid limbo-mumbo-jumbo and making out she knows so much about contacting spirits from the Other Side. Jeez.

  ‘Your mum and dad aren’t talking to each other now,’ Leo reports as he glides back through my bedroom door and rests on the end of my bed again.

  I sigh. ‘Oh… great…’ And Amber glares at me angrily.

  I scowl and mouth an equally angry ‘what?!’ back at her. God, it’s very difficult trying to be in two places at once. I’m up here trying to maintain an air of interest whilst my deluded friend is doing her best to converse with the dead and meanwhile downstairs it sounds as if my parents have done ripping each other to bits and are now visiting Coventry. Brilliant. I can’t wait to get back to school actually. Away from all this crap. And I don’t often say that on a Sunday evening. To be honest I don’t often say that at all. Things must be bad.

  ‘I think the ley-lines must be wrong here,’ Amber finally surrenders, sitting back and taking her fingers off the beaker. ‘ I think perhaps because it’s Sunday they’re out of alignment. That’s probably it. Maybe we should try something else… perhaps during the week – d’you think?’ She looks a little downhearted. Even Leo looks sorry for her. Suddenly he bounces up from the bed and disappears out of the room as if he either got a spring up his bum or he’s had an idea. I want to ask but I can’t and the suspense is killing.

  Then there’s a loud knock at the door. Amber spins to face me and my first reaction is to leap on and bundle all the letter-cards together, or at least turn them over so that mum or dad – whoever it is – think that at worst we’ve been shirking homework and instead playing 21 card brag (whatever that is). Amber’s eyes are on stalks, though. She creeps s-l-o-w-l-y to the door and opens it a crack, peering round. Then she flings the door wide open and gasps really loudly, as if she’s seen something positively unbelievable.

  There’s nothing there. Well, that’s not strictly true – Leo is there, well, he was there, but when Amber threw the door wide open, he stepped in – through her I must add – and now he’s standing here giggling like a girl with one hand across his mouth. His shoulders are shaking with uncontrollable hilarity. He’s such a prat. But Amber’s face is a picture. In fact I’m trying very hard to stifle a grin myself. And – alright then, so if I could I’d definitely be laughing alongside my stupid ghost guest here, but I can’t can I? Amber is totally gobsmacked. That’s two gobsmackings in one day – it must be a Preston first.

  Ever so slowly, Amber begins to regroup and I go over to her side and lead her back to my bed for a well-deserved sit down.

  ‘Did you see that?’ she trembles, still staring at the open doorway.

  ‘No.’ I have to lie. It’d be pretty hard saying “actually yeah – and did you feel that dead person who walked straight through you and is now laughing hysterically beside me here – at you?!” well it would, wouldn’t it?

  ‘There was a knock on your door!’ Amber says in a strangulated whisper. ‘But there was nobody there!’

  ‘Amber – that’s not scary or even unusual, I’m afraid,’ I tell her. ‘If you had a three year old crazy for a brother then you wouldn’t be quite so amazed, believe me!’

  ‘But your brother is downstairs!’ she gapes up at me.

  ‘Ah – now that’s what he wants you to think, Amber, he’s a clever little sod, really he is – he learnt everything he knows from me!’ I p
raise my quick thinking with that one.

  ‘But I heard…..’ she says flatly, pointing to the door.

  ‘I know you did, Amb. Now let’s get this all cleared up before mum has one of her hissy fits, then I’ll walk you back home so I’ve still got time to copy up your History notes for tomorrow when I get back, yeah?’

  ‘But….. you must have heard it, Mads, you MUST have?’

  ‘I’m not sure what I heard, Amb. Or… perhaps it’s just you that the ghosts come through for, after all, eh? Maybe they can only receive your channel and nobody else’s, hmm? Have you thought of that? Perhaps that was their way of saying “tune in another night for some more of the same”?’ I do a little air quote and try to sound like an announcer off the telly.