by Cooper, D A
Across the table Leo sighs deeply and rolls his eyes and I am in completely agreement with his sentiments. This is very probably going to get us nowhere. My dad seems to be fit for nothing, my mum looks like she’s thinking twice about having invited Mrs Hale into our kitchen and I hear Davey making complaining noises in the background so he’s about to join this merry throng any second now and really place cats amongst pigeons. I wish I’d just stayed at school and slept during Graphics. Everyone else does.
‘Can I have a milkshake?’ Davey waves his cup and straw over at us masterfully with his plaster-casted arm as he rubs an eye with his other hand and tries to focus on the assembled crowd at the table. It must look like we’re in a kind of waiting room to him. All these grown ups in one place at one time and nobody talking much. He looks suitably cautious.
Mum reaches over and takes his cup from him and when she’s gone he pulls himself onto her seat and starts to stare around at all of us v-e-r-y slowly. He smiles at me. I smile back. Then his gaze follows round to Mrs Hale at whom he frowns until she smiles sweetly and does a gentle little wave and then he drops his barrier and smiles back. Dad rolls his head over to his son and does what he believes to be an entertaining “knock-knock”ing on his plaster, which makes him scowl and pull his arm away angrily. Then Davey’s gaze lifts and lifts until his eyes meet Leo’s and then his smile broadens into a full-blown grin.
‘Le-o…’ he says matter-of-factly as if he’s known Leo all his life and is not in the slightest bit fazed at having the ghost of a dead person standing in his kitchen. ‘Where’s Mia gone?’
Leo does a full shoulder-shrug and smiles back at him. ‘Dunno, Davey,’ he says like he’s talking to his own kid brother. ‘But she’ll be back later – she likes playing with you.’
Mrs Hale has been playing Leo-Davey tennis quite blatantly with her eyes out on stalks and I wait for a million pennies to drop – all on the kitchen table and at once.
‘Davey?’ Mum turns gingerly to face us all. Davey’s gaze drags from Leo to Mum and his eyes widen.
‘Hmm?’ he rubs at his cast absently.
‘Davey who’s Leo?’ she says apprehensively.
‘Him,’ Davey points to behind Dad’s chair.
Mum walks slowly over towards Dad, her eyes scarily wide open as she scans the air from floor to ceiling trying to see what it is that Davey (and me, oh, and Mrs Hale) can see but she can’t. Why can’t she anyway?
‘She doesn’t have the freedom of spirit,’ Leo tells me. I frown in query. Freedom of spirit? What the hell does that mean?
‘She’s too guarded; too suspicious. It comes with age I guess. The longer you live, the more cautious you become – the less likely you are to accept that there are “other-worldly” things going on around you. You just want to see the obvious things, things that make sense. Other stuff – like me – spiritual stuff, only the equally free-spirited can see. The younger you are, the more natural it is – the older you get… well… as you can see.’ He turns a hand towards my mum who is still straining and peering and doing a really odd-looking slow dance around the area that Davey pointed to just now.
‘Where?’ she says and Davey points again. Leo sidesteps as mum is about to walk straight through him again. He must find it nearly as weird as I do – seeing one person walk right through another. So how come I get to see these ghosts then? I couldn’t be more cautious and suspicious if Caution and Suspicion were being given away in a Buy One Get One Free at a Top Shop end of season sale.
Leo laughs. ‘You have plenty of free-spirit, Maddie,’ he says, doing a funny skip away from Mum again whilst Davey grins on, pointing to wherever Leo lands next, delighted with the whole mad performance. ‘You just don’t realise it.’
‘He’s right, my duck,’ Mrs Hale pats my hand unexpectedly. ‘You seem to be a receptor at the moment. You and Davey both. It’s okay. Really – it is.’ She crinkles her eyes kindly. ‘There’s very likely some kind of reason you and your brother can see these people; there’s always a connection, a key that unlocks one world to the next. We simply have to find out what it is.’
My eyes hold hers. Is it? Is he right? Is what’s happening to me – to us here - alright? And then I’m surprised my cheeks aren’t spitting like water on a frying pan because pent up tears start to spill out of my eyes and down my hot face unending. As I continue to embrace Mrs Hale’s sympathetic stare, I realise that all I needed was a little grown-up validation of my sanity to make me feel more normal and not quite so fruit-cake-y. And then I feel my period start. Big time.
twenty-two
As I fish about frantically in the box marked ‘girl stuff’ which is taped up in the corner of the bathroom, I can hear a low hum of voices downstairs still. I can’t make out what it is they’re saying precisely but there’s the odd trill of excitement from Davey and I can guess that Mum is still pretty much trying to see what it is her son can. And not succeeding I would imagine. Really, she did look funny trying to see Leo. If she’d widened her eyes any more I swear I’d have had to have got eggcups out of the cupboard to catch her eyeballs in when they fell out of her head.
‘Maddie?’ She yells up the stairs now. ‘We have to sit down and sort this out – come on – Penny doesn’t have all day you know!’
Oh, I’m sure she bloody does, I sniff crossly as I flush the loo and turn the hot tap on, squidging some almond handsoap into my palm. I love this smell. It reminds me of Christmas and marzipan icing on the cake. There’s a tap on the door.
‘Okay, okay, I’m coming!’ I yell. ‘Can’t a girl even pee in peace now or what?!’
It doesn’t matter what they say to me, I’ve decided that I’m still really angry that they’ve made us move into this stupid haunted house. I don’t care that it’s not exactly Mum or Dad’s fault – they could have had this place tested first, surely? For entities? Like you have to have surveys and stuff, right – when you move? Couldn’t they have gotten someone in who did a thorough check to ensure that the previous occupants hadn’t left anything important behind, like – oh, I don’t know – their undead souls or something? There is no way that any amount of persuasion from Mrs Hale, Ghostbuster extraordinaire or not, is going to change my mind about how detrimental moving to this house has been. And if my grades go downhill then I shall be sleeping on the steps of Number Ten until G. Eff. Brown Esquire bloody well recognises and does something about upturning our economy pretty damned sharpish before I end up having to sweep hair cuttings from the floor of whichever hair salon Amber will be working at.
Oh god, the humiliation.
‘Hey,’ It’s Leo’s voice outside the door. I turn the handle.
‘Sheee-it!’ I leap back into the bathroom as I meet his stare. Smiley stare but still a stare nonetheless. And a stare from a ghost can’t ever be a great thing. Especially when you’ve been fighting with tampons and panty liners not two feet away from it.
‘Did you do that?’ I demand, scowling at him and pointing furiously to the door. ‘knock on the door?’
He nods.
‘You’d better watch it – before you know it you’ll be able to touch all sorts of things and then I’ll have you making me endless cups of tea for all eternity!’ I grin forcibly and push through him. He flinches dramatically and then bends double, holding his middle like I’ve injured him or something. I can hear him making gruesome noises of feigned injury and so I totally ignore him and waltz back downstairs and into the kitchen, grateful that he can’t see me grinning.
‘Madeline you’ve been talking to somebody,’ Mum hands me a mug of tea, holding my gaze firmly.
I sigh resignedly, hold both my hands up in an ‘I surrender’ stance and take the mug from her greedily, plonking myself back down on the chair next to Mrs Hale. She smiles benevolently and I warm to her even more than I did earlier. When she virtually told me I wasn’t going mad. You remember.
‘Madeline I think you need to tell us what’s happening,’ Mum says quietly, sitting
back down opposite us, next to Dad. I can hear the telly on next door and presume Davey’s away with the Big Bird down Sesame Street. He’ll be amused and occupied for hours. I wish I was in there with him.
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘I guess there’s no point in hiding it from you anyway – not after last night’s events,’ I take a sip of tea and it burns my top lip. I flinch. ‘I see dead people,’ I say casually without a flicker of amusement. I daren’t look up because I know that I’ll come face to face with irritation at my trying to Be Clever and winding them up. Only I’m not, am I? I DO see dead people. I’m staring right at one right now.
‘That’s not funny,’ Mum, Dad and Leo seem to say all at the same time.
‘I know it’s not,’ I can feel hot tears threatening to reveal themselves all over the table. Again. ‘And it’s actually not,’ anger is bubbling up now. ‘Not funny in the slightest - to be able to see things that aren’t there and be able to communicate with something that doesn’t exist anymore and get angry and frustrated and annoyed with a person who doesn’t breathe anymore. YOU try dealing with it and see how mega-super-duper-NOT-funny it seriously is!’
The room goes quiet.
Leo takes a deep breath. ‘Crikey,’ he says sighing heavily. ‘I didn’t realise I pissed you off quite so much. Maybe I should just get out of your face and get on with my death and not bother you anymore so you can get on with your life, eh?’
I nod heavily. I’m tired. I just want to get a hot water bottle, some Paracetamol and go and curl up in bed.
‘Madeline?’ Mrs Hale touches my hand on the table and lowers her head so that it’s somewhere near mine. Which is still bowed and still feeling like it could roll off and away out of the room at any minute. ‘It’s a gift, my love,’ she says. ‘Truly it is. It might not feel like it right now, but it’s a rare and wonderful thing this talent that you posses. And because you have this ability to see them, and to hear them, then you’re in a very strong position to help them move on to wherever it is they need to be right now…’ her words sound familiar.
They remind me of some of the crap Amber’s been coming out with. All this moving on shite. Why can’t they say something else for a change? Why should these dead people have to move on anyway? Surely if they wanted to move onto somewhere better, greater, wouldn’t they have done it without resorting to assistance from the living? I mean, wouldn’t there have been a guide or something to help them on their journey through the afterlife?
‘Maybe you’re supposed to be my guide, Mads,’ Leo says sounding really hushed for a change. ‘Maybe that’s why you can see us and maybe that’s why you all moved here – it’s part of the plan. And anyway – where does it say that we want to move ON… maybe we’d much prefer to move back IN. Back here. With you lot…living I mean.’
I raise my head now and imagine he’s teasing me and when I look at his face he’ll be all smiley and jokey … but he’s not. When finally I bring my eyes to meet his, I can tell that he’s deadly serious and has an expression I haven’t seen on his face before. His eyes convey absolute desperation and such terrible unhappiness that I start to cry all over again.
Mrs Hale pats my hand and Mum passes me a tissue.
‘I didn’t think he was malevolent,’ she says, taking one for herself too. ‘I mean, you looked so happy to be with each other that night I saw you, remember?’
I nod, and dab. I dab and nod. And then I blow really loudly and snottily and with very little feminine grace. Leo winces but smiles through his revulsion.
‘Nice,’ he says. ‘Very delicate. Not.’
twenty-three
Dad, bless his unemployed soul, is thankfully and speedily sobering up. Mrs Hale has been making him sweet black coffees for the past half hour and Davey is chatting to Leo, a rapt; frankly gobsmacked mother still staring on wild-eyed and quite plainly peed off that she can’t detect even a whiff of his ghostly presence.
It’s just another normal day in the Preston household. If the postman turned up right now he would have to be taken away on a stretcher with smelling salts or something. Any sane person would be a freaking mess after all the crap we’ve had to endure over the past few days. And as we aren’t messes we must be insane because we’re all managing pretty much to hold ourselves together in the face of this adversity of supernatural proportions. If it weren’t so mad it’d be laughable and I’m actually thinking one day I may write about this. It has all the ingredients for a really good story – but it’d have to be labelled ‘fiction’ ‘cause no one would believe this actually happened, would they?
‘Davey ask Leo if he could try moving something again, will you?’ Mum sits with her chin propped up on her hands at the table. She’s been like this for ages. I think she’s waiting for some kind of silvery ghostly mist to materialise in front of her. She hates not being able to see him. Leo rolls his eyes. She’d hate to have seen that. She’d scowl. So I do it for her.
‘Hey!’ I snip as quietly as possible so Mum doesn’t get upset by his irritation. ‘Just cos she can’t see you is no reason to look so bloody miserable about something she asks you to do, ghost-boy!’
Leo looks suitably scolded and smiles an apology. Davey pushes the tomato ketchup pot over to him and widens his eyes.
‘Go on, Leo,’ he says encouragingly.
Leo slides his hand across the table, his fingers almost touching the container and then his hand fizzes through the thing, until it looks like the ketchup bottle is sitting on the top of his hand. He sighs a big fat sigh and flops his head into his other hand theatrically.
‘Bah, it’s no use!’ he frowns exasperatedly. ‘I can’t do it and your mum is starting to think I don’t exist now.’
In unison, Davey and I turn to mum who is still watching the ketchup bottle. She notices and flinches back, frowning.
‘What?’ she puts a hand to her throat. ‘What’s up?’
‘Nothing,’ I tell her. ‘Precisely nothing. He can’t move it. He’s tried but his hand just goes straight through. Funny though…’
‘What? What’s funny though?’
‘Well when I was in the bathroom earlier… he knocked on the door. I thought it was you, but –‘
‘I did, didn’t I?!’ Leo leaps to his feet. ‘I banged on the door. I wasn’t really thinking about it – I just had the urge to annoy you –,’
‘Yeah so thanks for that,’ I chuck him a dry smile. ‘And it doesn’t take a detective to work out I have you to thank for the choco-pops hair style the other morning!’
He smiles sarcastically back. ‘But it shows I can do it – I just have to –,’
‘-you would have to want to do it from the pit of your belly,’ Mrs Hale interupts Leo as she hands Dad another cup of steaming coffee. He winces as he stares into it’s dark goodness for what must feel like the hundredth time this afternoon.
‘So what are you saying?’ Mum pleads.
‘Leo must have the natural – almost living urge if you like - of wanting to do something before he can do it –,’ Mrs Hale twists her own mug in her hand. ‘The kind of desire that comes from doing something so spontaneous that it’s almost not even thought about. Too much thought can cloud the originality of that idea – poof! and it’s gone. You see?’ She cocks her head as Mum nods knowledgeably. I don’t know whether to nod or not – it all sounds a bit airy-fairy to me, being the sensible girl that I am. Either Mrs Hale watches far too many re-runs of the X-Files or she’s for real. I’m still undecided. But she can definitely see Leo - that’s a given. She’s talked to him and with him and followed his movements around the kitchen and I must say he’s really nice to her as well. So he might have been right when he said she has a good heart. I’m willing to be swayed anyway. And I’m guessing Amber would totally love her.
Another hour later and my throat is getting parched from having to translate everything Leo says to Mum and Dad. It’s exhausting and I don’t see tea being made anywhere, anytime soon either.
‘I take it
Leo’s parents don’t know that their deceased family are still residing here?’ she asks… who? Me? Leo? The room?
‘I shouldn’t think so, I certainly haven’t told them. And anyway, I wouldn’t know them from Adam.’ Mum says.
‘They have no idea,’ Leo approaches Mrs Hale for total confirmation. ‘Although I know that Mum used to sit and talk to me and Mia on her own– she never heard our replies though. She just cried into the silence. It’s horrible… even after three years. I hoped she’d kinda move on a bit – even a little bit – but she hasn’t.’