by Cooper, D A
Suddenly there is an ear-piercing shriek from upstairs and a banging of feet.
Mum and I race to the bottom of the stairs and we stare as Amber stands breathless at the top, waving something madly in her hand, yelling at the top of her voice:
“YES! Yes! Yes! He did it! He did it!’
My mum’s face turns slowly to mine and I hope and pray mine isn’t burning as much as it feels it is.
‘Mario Kart,’ I tell my mother’s shocked face in a flash of inspiration. ‘She was Yoshi….didn’t think she could do it. Woo hoo! Well done, Amber!’ I yell back up at her excited, flushed face.
twenty-eight
‘You realise you might not remember me – us – this whole thing if our plan works and you manage to escape from the house – go into The Light, to Heaven, or wherever it is dead people end up…?’ I say to Leo as we walk back from Amber’s house at half ten. Slightly late for a school night but what the heck. ‘I mean, if you get to open the door, leave the house, then you won’t ever have haunted Ferndale Way, will you? You’ll be the tragedy in the newspaper, but not the ongoing troubled spirits that roam the scene… it’ll be bizarre. You won’t remember anything because it won’t have happened. Although I’ll remember it because I helped you escape it. ’ My insides twist a little at this realisation and I don’t want to look at Leo’s face.
‘I’ve been thinking that too,’ he says, his hands stuffed into his jeans pockets. ‘It’s a bit weird, isn’t it? Knowing that – if it works, of course - it will have been you lot who helped us escape the jaws of eternal limbo and everything – but not realising how we were helped.’
‘I know,’ I sigh. ‘But then it’s probably the least of our worries right now.’
Leo turns to me, his dull eyes shining as much as a dead pair can and he smiles.
‘We need to make sure you know where the key is when the house starts to reconstruct again. Maybe it should be in the hallway, near the front door?’
Now it’s Leo’s turn to sigh. ‘The only problem with that is that I never seem to be able to make it out the bedroom door. I’m too overcome with smoke fumes. You’ve seen me, sprawled out trying to reach the doorway – no, it’ll have to be left in my…I mean your room somewhere. I just hope that I see it and realise what I’ve got to do.’
‘How about I leave it on the bedside table?’ I suggest. ‘You’re bound to see it there.’
‘I like that, he says. ‘My bedside table was in the same place. Our bedrooms are laid out virtually the same, you know.’
I smile. I like that too. I like that we’re sleeping in pretty much the same position as each other – it makes me feel closer to him somehow.
‘Mind you,’ I say, still smiling, ‘there’s not a great deal you can do with a room like that, is there?’
‘How d’you mean?’ he frowns.
‘Well, just that it’s so small – there wasn’t a lot of choice in how I had it organised. In fact I had to sell my big bed ‘cos it wouldn’t fit in there. I mean, if I’d put my bed in there, there wouldn’t have been any room to even open the door, let alone … what?’
He’s silent now, just staring down at his feet and watching one move in front of the other.
‘What is it?’
‘I’m just waiting, Maddie,’ he says and stops walking.
‘What for?’
‘For the rest of that sentence. The bit where you call it the shitty, sucky place where everything is small and smelly and… well, all the rest of it.’
I open my mouth to slam something back at him but then shut it again and realise what a cow I’ve been. In thought and in words. I’ve been a mega-bitch about Leo’s old house. And he loved it. He loved living in it with his lovely, lovely family and all I’ve ever done is verbally trash it. I’m an official nasty piece of work. There. I’ve thought it. So now he knows how bad I feel about it.
‘S’okay,’ he says, lowering his head and kicking a pile of leaves. Then he looks up from under his fringe and smirks. ‘Hey, did you see that? I’m getting good at this,’ his face beams and then he places his soft, misty hand through mine like he’s holding it. ‘Come on, let’s get back home.’
My belly is still twisting and the butterflies are still fluttering about even after I’ve got back in, said my goodnights to Mum and Dad, taken my make up off in the bathroom and sighed a hundred millions times at my reflection in the mirror. Oh God, he really won’t remember me if this thing works out. Will he? How will I feel about that? I stare dismally down into the plug hole. I don’t think I’ll like it. I think I’ll like it less than Amber thinks she will. I think I’ll like it less than…oh god, less than…
‘I’m sure I’ll remember this,’ I’m shocked to find whispered right in my face, only seconds before I lift my eyes and realise that Leo is standing inside the sink right in front of me between me and the mirror. His head is bent down and his ghostly lips are a fraction of a distance away from mine. Before I’ve even had a chance to gasp with shock, I feel something warm under my hair at the back of my neck and my face is drawn to his. In a heartbeat his mouth is on mine. And I can actually feel his soft lips moving with mine. He must really want to be doing this, my head keeps telling me. That’s why he can. Because he really wants to.
‘I do really want to,’ he murmurs into my mouth. Oh god, I think I’m floating. There’s no other way to describe this feeling. My legs have disappeared, my arms are invisible and my brain has been replaced by marshmallow. My head feels so spacey that I think I might have died alongside this gorgeous ghost and I’ve gone to actual heaven with him.
I don’t want it to end but, almost as slowly and as gently as it started, Leo’s face pulls back smiling, his nose just a whisker away from mine. I smile back. I can’t help it. I think I’ve lost every cynical bone – along with every actual bone in my body. I can’t even think straight. I’m just about to try to find something meaningful to say to him when his smile just gets wider and more kissable, if that were at all possible. Then his lips brush the end of my nose and he’s gone. And I’m left standing unsteadily, staring back at my wide-smiling reflection in the mirror again, wondering if I might have to see a doctor about hallucinations. Very vivid ones. Very lovely ones. Very incredible ones that I want to keep on having over and over again.
Just as I shut my eyes and try to recapture the last few seconds of my very real-feeling figment of the imagination, there’s a small tap on the door and I leap at it. It must be Leo. He’s come back. I fling it wide open and feel my heart slump audibly in the still of the air – and gaze at nothing. At least nothing Leo-height, anyway. Then my knees are brushed by a clammy hand and Davey stares up at me with very sleepy eyes.
‘I think I need a poo,’ he says.
twenty-nine
I don’t know how we get through the whole of the next day without spontaneously combusting with anticipation. Of course Amber’s thrills can’t possibly be compared with the one I keep replaying over and over in my head from last night. And I’ve totally rewritten the ‘Bathroom Scene’ from supernatural movies. I just wish our excitement wasn’t directly linked to people dying in a burning house. But at least we have a plan. All we need now is the situation in which to put it to use.
Mum’s gone to pick up Dad from Ristorante Gardella and the house is lovely and quiet. Especially as there’s no kid brother tearing about and talking to invisible people. At least I know how to keep a lid on things – maybe I need to teach him how to be more reserved around ghosts. I’ll have to keep notes. I’m clearly going to become quite a connoisseur. Instinctively I turn to see if Leo heard me think that and he smiles sexily at me from where he’s leaning on the side of the chair, watching the computer screen.
Amber and I have just finished trawling through a whole load of homework that Mr Spicer gave us on the altruistic tendencies of the lower-middle class in Eighteenth Century England – whatever-the-hell-that-means, when Leo just disappears. He fizzles out. One minute he’s there �
�� then he’s not.
‘Where’d he go?’ my heart picks up speed.
Amber looks up casually. ‘Who?’
‘Well Leo – du-ur! Who d’you think?’
She puts the book down on her lap but doesn’t look around like I’m doing. I don’t suppose there’s any point in asking somebody to help you find the invisible. ‘Dunno – maybe he’s gone to get something to help us – y’know, now that he can lift stuff and move stuff and things – he’s probably remembered you’ve got a really good book upstairs that references this homework – maybe - or….’ She trails off after noticing that my face is covered with frowns at her lame reasons. ‘Oh my god. D’you think…’ she says and her mouth stays open as she stares about the now silent room as if a performance is about to start. Which, okay, it probably could be.
Actually when Leo was here earlier helping us with our homework it kinda felt like I would imagine it would feel being at college and sharing digs with other students – whilst still making sure our homework was done on time and to the best of our ability, of course. It feels slightly lonely now that Leo’s gone and I’m stuck here with only Amber for well… company.
‘What was that?’ Amber twists her head to the door.
‘What was what? I didn’t hear anything.’
‘I think your mum’s back,’ Amber says. ‘I definitely heard something in the kitchen… like cutlery or something… hey – weren’t you supposed to start dinner too?’
‘Oh sh…. it!’ I am! I quickly check my watch, leap up from the swivel chair like my pants are on fire and just as I get to the kitchen door, my spook-radar cranks up big-time and the hairs start to lift off my neck. There’s a drawer open. The utensils drawer. That’s what Amber just heard. Alright, it might mean nothing. But it could mean something. But it’s way earlier than it happened last time. Surely it’d happen at the same time wouldn’t it?… ah… wait a minute – what was it Leo said about His Time? It’s not the same as ours, he said, didn’t he? That they have no real concept of time – it’s all one long endless thing for them – sounded horrible when he told me. Still does actually. I turn to go fetch Amber but I don’t need to – she’s right behind me.
‘So, chef, what are we supposed to be….he-ey…’ she says delightedly, sticking her nose through the kitchen door. ‘Mmmm… smells like someone’s already been doing some cooking in here – what is that – oooh it’s yummy!’ and she sniffs the air like she could totally stick it in between two slices of bread and satisfy her stomach with it. I must admit, it does smell wonderful. But it also reminds me of what happened the other evening after Nonna had helped me cook that pasta dish. And putting this smell with the disappearance of Leo just now is making me wish I had a supernatural calculator because it feels like I should be adding some things up.
‘Call Leo,’ I tell her flatly. She frowns at me and looks like she’s about to start saying something like “what am I? Your servant?” but I don’t give her time. ‘Just do it!’ I snap.
Amber heads for the stairs and yells his name two, three – four times and then I hear a door slam shut. I stop my exercise in drawer-shutting in the kitchen and freeze, listening. Amber spins on her heels.
‘The living room door just shut,’ she says.
‘Shit.’
‘What? Why? What’s happening?’ Amber isn’t sure what she should be doing. ‘What’s that noise?’
I turn from where I’m standing in the kitchen and even though I shouldn’t be, I’m stunned to once again watch as drawers open v-e-r-y slowly and the insides are sifted around; metallic noises chinking and getting louder and louder as each drawer is systematically dragged open. It doesn’t seem to be happening quite so quickly and madly as the other night and I’m wondering if this is really how it starts and whether things will start to hot up or whether this is like ‘take two thousand and ninety nine’ of the scene that keeps repeating itself over and over and in slightly different ways every time.
‘This is IT!’ I very nearly squeak with excitement, ‘it’s happening NOW!'
‘Oh my god. So… who’s – what’s doing that?’ Amber points at the fifth drawer to open. I shake my head.
‘I think it’s Leo’s granddad but I’ve never actually seen him – apart from dead on the landing the last time. I don’t understand why he’s the only one I haven’t seen properly – in the flesh I mean…’ I stop, appalled at my idiocy. ‘well, not the flesh –oh, you know what I mean!’
Amber smiles her understanding, her eyes still focussed on the kitchen drawers and their seemingly unaided performance.
‘Amber? Choice…’ I say trying to distract her and keep us engaged on the task in hand. She lifts her eyes to me instantly. ‘Stay and watch - or go find Leo,’ I urge her.
Her brow knits. ‘Er… and how am I supposed to find a ghost?’ she very nearly “du-ur”’s me.
‘Okay. Good point,’ I concede, ‘you’ll have to be on living room door duty then… just keep trying to get it open, yeah?’
Amber nods obligingly and I take the stairs.
My door is pretty much closed. Not how I left it this afternoon during our little homework session. But then Leo has been back here, hasn’t he? The reconstruction has taken him back to where he would have been at the time the fire started. Nonna’s in the living room, Nonno – presumably – is searching for something – the key we think – in the kitchen and Leo and Mia are both upstairs. Mia… I think. Mia… Maybe I should think about moving her first, so Leo has less to do. Or maybe I need to get Leo up and out so that there’s more than one of us trying to handle this nightmare. I can smell smoke now and it’s getting heavier up here. There’s no actual visual of smoke, nor are there any flames or smoke downstairs and I can hear Amber squeaking ‘Ow! Ouch!’ every now and then as she tries to get a hold of the fiery door handle.
I don’t have time to yell anything down to Amber but I tell myself to remember to soak a tea towel in water and try opening the door handle that way once I get back downstairs. Of course if it’s anything like the last time it’ll be shut fast and nothing will move it.
Once my eyes adjust to the dim light inside my room I can see that Leo is sitting on the side of the bed. He’s coughing with all the smoke that’s up here and staring around like he hasn’t the first clue as to what’s happening. I go over to him and put my arms out to shake him and get him standing but my hands go straight through him as usual – as if he’s made of mist and nothing else.
‘Leo!’ I yell above the noise of the crackling fire and the banging drawers and now the taps I can hear gushing water downstairs. ‘Leo! You have to open your eyes but don’t breathe too hard.’
I’m frantic. My heart is hammering and I’m starting to feel sick with apprehension at this whole horrible nightmare. I try to grab his hand again, repeating over and over in my head “Please, please, please try. Please”. This time I meet with a little bit of resistance – unless it’s my imagination - and then his head turns to face me. He squints a bit and then he rubs his eyes. There must be more smoke from his dimension I’m trying to figure. Of course, all we are able to make out is noise and smell but I’m guessing there would’ve been a heck of a lot of smoke – maybe too much for him to see properly beyond his nose right now.
I take the front door key off the bedside table and with all the determination I posses; I push it into his hand.
‘You must take this,’ I urge him.
He frowns and coughs, staring at the key as if it’s something completely alien. ‘Hold the key, Leo – Take it!’ I almost scream. His hand and my heart virtually takes flight as I watch his fingers begin to curl curiously around it. But then his shoulders start to slump, his eyelids sag slightly and the key starts to slip through his mistiness and I realise he’s drifting away again. He mustn’t!
‘LEO!’ this time I scream, trying to force the key into his palm. ‘You have to get Mia! Come on! Come with me!’
He frowns strangely at me but he’s focussi
ng more and this time the key stays inside his fist. ‘Wha- what’s happening…who…?’ he squints. He’s clearly delirious. But I don’t care what he says, I just need to get him moving and out of this gas chamber and into his sister’s room so he can get them both downstairs and open up the door with this damned key.
‘Just come with me!’ I urge, and slowly, curiously, he follows me out of the room, across the landing and into Mia’s room.
She’s curled up in her bed and whether she’s breathing still or not is difficult to tell and impossible to verify because Leo’s clearly found strength he didn’t appear to have much of before; he’s scooped Mia up and out of her bed and now he’s relying on me and me alone to be his eyes as I we make our way cautiously down the stairs. About halfway down he stops and I coax him on, urging him to hurry.