Drive By

by Jim Carrington

  And all of a sudden, I feel sober. Did they slow down to look at us? Do they know what we did? Or were they just checking us out because we’re out late at night?

  I feel a tug on my sleeve. Jake. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘I wanna get home some time this century.’

  I start shuffling along again, getting closer and closer to the spot where . . . Well, the spot.

  ‘Have you ever seen a ghost, Jake?’

  Jake turns to me and rolls his eyes. ‘Not this rubbish again, J,’ he says. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Yeah, I am.’

  ‘Ghosts don’t exist,’ Jake says. ‘We’ve already had this conversation.’

  ‘They do though.’

  Jake turns and looks at me like I’ve gone mad.

  ‘What?’ I say. ‘They do.’

  There’s silence for a second. Jake stares at me like he’s trying to work out if I’m taking the mickey or not. I don’t know why – must be the cider or something – but I smirk and then laugh. Jake sighs and then turns, starts walking home.

  I follow. ‘They do. I should know. I’ve got one all of my own. I’m being haunted.’

  Jake doesn’t even bother looking at me. ‘Give it a rest, J.’

  We turn left, on to the top of Exminster Avenue. Jake marches off ahead as fast as he can. He doesn’t want to talk about it. He wants to bury his head in the sand. But I have to talk about this. So I think of something that I know will get his attention.

  ‘It’s the Poisoned Dwarf,’ I say. ‘She’s been haunting me for weeks.’

  Jake stops walking. He doesn’t turn round immediately, but stands still. Then, slowly, he turns. And even though I know I shouldn’t, even though I don’t know why I’m doing it, I smile.

  ‘Shut up, Johnny,’ he says. ‘You’re drunk. You don’t know what you’re saying. You need to go home and sleep the booze off.’

  I shake my head. ‘I’m deadly serious. I’ve felt her presence ever since she died. She’s been watching me. She wakes me up in the middle of the night every night.’

  Jake shakes his head. ‘You’ve lost the plot. Go home.’

  ‘I’m not. It’s true. She’s waking me up every night at 2.43 in the morning. It’s driving me mental. I don’t know if I can handle it any more. Why would I make something like that up?’

  ‘You need to get home before you say something really stupid,’ Jake says. He walks over to me and grabs my arm, like he’s gonna lead me home.

  I shake my arm away. ‘This is serious, Jake,’ I say. ‘We killed someone.’

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ Jake hisses.

  I lean in closer to him. ‘She died because of what we did. You can try and pretend it didn’t happen. But it did. And her ghost is haunting me, all right?’

  Jake stares angrily into my eyes, but he looks scared too. He doesn’t say anything for ages. I think that maybe the message has got through his thick skull at last. Maybe he’s starting to realise how serious this actually is. But then he looks away from me.

  ‘I’m going home now. You should too. You need to stop shouting your mouth off.’ And then he walks away.

  I watch as he walks along his road through the orange glow of the street lamps. When he’s gone in through his front door, I walk home. I cross Exminster Avenue so I don’t have to walk directly past the Poisoned Dwarf’s house. As I get close though I can’t help but look. I stop in the street and stare at number fifteen. The curtains are all drawn. The house is dark except for one room upstairs. I imagine the old man up there, lying in bed, looking at the empty place next to him.

  A shiver runs down my spine. I can feel the presence again. She’s here somewhere. I look around me at the pavement and the road and up at the windows of the houses nearby. There’s no one else here. Just me and the ghost. Me and the Poisoned Dwarf. The thought crosses my mind to tell her to get lost, to get lost and leave me alone. But I don’t. I head off, take one last look at number fifteen just at the moment that the upstairs light goes off and the house is plunged into darkness.

  Summer

  I looked for the other tape this morning, but Mum must have it hidden somewhere. I won’t stop looking till I find it though.

  Right now, I’m sitting in the park, waiting for Johnny to turn up. I look at my watch. He was meant to be here by now. I blow a bubble with my gum. I let it pop and suck the gum back in. And then I see him so I get up from the bench to meet him. He’s hurrying along the path, looking at the ground. He doesn’t notice me for ages, till he looks up.

  ‘Hey, Johnny.’

  He smiles. He looks tired though. ‘All right, Summer,’ he says, and he leans in and kisses me on the cheek. He smells kind of boozy.

  We walk along the path away from the pond.

  I look at Johnny. He’s pale and tired – not that I can talk, but he really does look different from normal. The skin around his eyes is dark. He’s still cute though.

  ‘Did you have a good time with your mates?’ I ask.

  Johnny shrugs. ‘It was all right, yeah,’ he says. ‘Don’t feel so good now though . . .’

  I nod. I feel a teeny bit jealous. I wish my friends were around and that we went out and did stuff like that. ‘Hungover?’

  He nods. ‘Like you wouldn’t believe.’

  Which isn’t difficult, because I’ve never had a hangover in my life. I’ve never been drunk. I reckon I must have led a pretty sheltered life.

  ‘Shall we go to the café or something? My mouth feels like the Sahara Desert.’

  I look at him and smile. ‘Sure.’

  So we walk through the park to the little café by the lake. Johnny pays for the drinks and then comes and sits down. He hands my hot chocolate over to me. It’s got a large swirl of cream with some cocoa shaken on top. I pick up the spoon from the saucer and start spooning it into my mouth. I try and do it seductively, suggestively, licking the spoon clean. It’s a trick I learned from Ness at school. Except when I look up to try and give Johnny some eye contact, he isn’t even looking at me. He’s tapping the top of his can with his fingers. He snaps it open and then swigs loads of it down.

  ‘You been up to anything exciting, then?’ he says.

  I stir my hot chocolate. ‘I’ve been spending most of my time trying to find out about my dad.’

  Johnny looks up. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. It was the spiritualist church that got me thinking,’ I say, but I’m suddenly aware that maybe I shouldn’t be telling him this. I’m giving him another reason to think I’m some kind of morbid freak-job.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  I take a deep breath. ‘I don’t know. I feel confused about it all. When we were in the church and the medium was saying that stuff about the unnatural death and foul play, it made me think of my dad.’

  Johnny looks at me. His brow furrows, probably cos he doesn’t know what to say when I talk about Dad.

  ‘So I looked into it. I looked at the newspapers from when he died, tried to find out if there was foul play, if the spirit was trying to give me a message about his death.’

  Johnny leans in close. ‘And what did you find out?’

  ‘I read the newspaper report about his accident online and I found out a couple of things no one’s ever told me – he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt when he crashed and he skipped a red light. But that doesn’t change the fact that it was an accident, does it? Unless he wanted to die.’

  Johnny shrugs.

  ‘Anyway, I asked my mum about it and we ended up having a row.’

  Johnny makes a sympathetic face.

  ‘There was a photo of the crash scene in the newspaper as well. I’d never seen it before. And I wish I still hadn’t.’

  ‘That must have been rough.’

  I nod. ‘It was.’

  ‘So do you still think it was about your dad, then – that message from the spirit?’

  ‘Who knows?’ I say. ‘A lot of things the spirit said seemed to fit, but I guess it could have been anyone.’
/>
  Johnny takes another swig of his drink. ‘I’ve been thinking about stuff like that a lot lately,’ he says. ‘I’ve been feeling kind of weird the last couple of weeks.’

  ‘What, since you met me?’

  He laughs and shakes his head. ‘No,’ he says. He blushes. ‘I didn’t mean that. Something else.’

  Then he doesn’t say anything for a while. He looks down at the plastic table top and moves the salt shaker around absent-mindedly. And I wonder what he’s thinking.

  He stops playing with the salt suddenly and looks up at me. ‘I think I’m being haunted, Summer.’

  I wasn’t expecting him to say that. ‘Haunted?’

  He nods. He looks down at the table, starts moving the salt shaker again. ‘Sounds stupid, doesn’t it?’

  ‘No, not at all. Why d’you think it sounds stupid?’

  ‘Because there are no such things as ghosts, are there?’ he says, looking up at me.

  I shrug. ‘If you’re being haunted, surely that’s proof there are?’

  He looks at the table again. He starts playing with the grains of sugar that are on the table, sweeping them up into a pile with his fingers. ‘I don’t know for sure that I am being haunted though. I haven’t seen anyone. I just have this feeling like I’m being watched the whole time. And I keep getting woken up at the same time every night.’

  I sit and stare back at him. I wish I knew what to say.

  ‘I’ve been thinking that I’m just going mad – you know, imagining it,’ he goes on. ‘But then, the other night, I got this text.’ He looks up at me. His eyes are kind of pleading with me.

  ‘What did it say?’

  He looks down again and fiddles with his empty can. He shrugs. ‘Nothing much.’ Then he clams up. ‘It was just from a number I didn’t recognise. It was something that no one else would have known about apart from me and my friends and the ghost.’

  ‘Are you sure it wasn’t someone playing a trick on you?’

  ‘I thought that,’ he says. ‘But . . . I don’t know. That wouldn’t explain the weird feeling I’ve been having, like I’m being watched.’

  I nod. ‘So do you know who’s haunting you?’

  He nods. ‘I think so. An old lady.’

  ‘Really? Why?’

  Johnny’s quiet for ages. He stares at the table, moves the salt shaker again. ‘I don’t know.’

  I honestly don’t know what to say to him now. Things have got too deep. Johnny looks kind of hunched up and uncomfortable. And it’s my fault for starting this stupid freako topic of conversation in the first place.

  I stir my hot chocolate. And we’re silent. When I look up, Johnny’s still looking at the table. I reach across and put my hand on top of his. Immediately he looks up and smiles.

  ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have told you all that,’ he says. ‘It must be the hangover.’

  I smile. ‘That’s OK. I like sensitive people.’

  He smiles too. His cheeks flush for a second.

  ‘Hey, there’s a boating lake just over there,’ I say. ‘Do you fancy hiring a rowing boat with me?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  Johnny

  I’m on my way back home from the bus stop. I feel rubbish. I don’t know why I told Summer all that stuff. It just sort of spewed out of my mouth. Jesus, I think I need to curl up in a corner and sleep this hangover off, which is exactly what I plan on doing when I get home.

  I go to cross the road so I don’t have to walk directly past the Poisoned Dwarf’s house. But then I stop and I think, why should I keep crossing? I need to get over this. I can’t spend the rest of my life scared to walk on that side of the road, feeling guilty and trying to hide it. I have to face this or it’s never gonna get better.

  As I walk along the pavement, a car drives past. I look up. It’s the Poisoned Dwarf’s husband. And all of a sudden I don’t feel so sure that I want to walk past his house. What if he’s getting out of his car as I go past? What if he looks at me? What if he knows what I did? What if she told him? I steel myself though and keep going.

  I get near number fifteen and I hear the engine of his car switch off. The driver’s door opens and out he gets, right in front of me. He brushes his comb-over up and across his head and then he shuts the car door. He looks at me and nods and sort of smiles. I nod back, my heart beating like mad. Then he walks past me and goes to the boot of his car. And that’s it.

  I keep on walking, my heart still thumping. This is ridiculous. All I did was walk past him and I feel like this. I need to get a grip. I need some sleep. I need to feel normal again.

  Before I’m twenty more steps along the road, I hear a shout. A yell of pain. I turn immediately. It takes a second to work out where it came from, but then I see the Poisoned Dwarf’s husband lying on the kerb, his shopping scattered all over the place.

  I run back along the pavement to him. He’s got blood coming from a cut on his head. He tries to sit up as I get close, but he winces in pain. He moves his hand down to his foot and grimaces.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I say.

  He shakes his head.

  I crouch down beside him. ‘What happened?’

  He closes his eyes and his face kind of creases up in pain.

  ‘Is it your foot?’

  He nods, eyes still closed, face still creased. He takes a slow, deep breath and then opens his eyes. ‘Misjudged the blasted kerb,’ he says. He lets out a breath. ‘Stupid old fool that I am.’

  I panic. I’m not really sure what to do. Should I call him an ambulance? Pick him up? Or get on my way and leave him alone?

  ‘Can you stand up?’ I say.

  He looks at me and nods his head. And I notice – God knows why – that his comb-over has fallen forward across the bloodied cut on his face. He tries to stand, but he can’t. He grimaces again.

  ‘Give me your hand,’ he says.

  I hold my hand out and he tries to stand again. He puts all his weight on me and I’m shocked by how heavy he is. He gets up to a standing position. I stay beside him, holding him steady. He tries to put his injured foot down and winces again.

  ‘Help me over to the house, will you?’

  I put my arm around him and walk with him slowly as he hops across the pavement. I open the gate and then help him along the path and up the front step to his porch. We stop. He puts his injured foot down and takes his keys out of his pocket. He hands them to me.

  ‘Could you open up, please?’ he says.

  I look at the bundle of keys and try and work out which one to use.

  ‘The long one,’ he says.

  I open the porch and then the front door and help him inside. I take him straight into the lounge and sit him down in an armchair, then go and shut the front door.

  As I get back into the lounge, he’s bent over in his chair, his trouser leg pulled up and his sock rolled down. He’s got a pained expression on his face as he touches his swelling ankle with his hand.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  He shakes his head without looking at me.

  ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

  He lets his trouser leg roll back down. He sits up in his chair and nods. ‘In the kitchen,’ he says, ‘in the freezer compartment, there should be some frozen peas. Wrap the pack in a tea towel and bring it through, would you?’

  I nod and go through to the kitchen. As I walk, I notice the pictures on the wall. Photos. Of the Poisoned Dwarf. She has that same screwed-up face in all of them, no sign of a smile. But I feel bad for even thinking it. I look away from the photos and walk to the door. I think about whether she can see me right now, whether her ghost is in the house.

  I search the freezer for frozen peas, grab a tea towel from a hook on the wall and then turn to head back to the lounge. As I’m leaving the kitchen I notice a calendar. My heart starts racing. The handwriting on the calendar is identical to that on the mirror in our bathroom the other night. The same shaky capital letters. I run my hand through my hair and th
ink about what that means. Whose handwriting is it? Is it the Poisoned Dwarf’s or maybe her husband’s?

  ‘Are you OK in there?’ the old man calls through.

  ‘Yeah, just coming,’ I call back. I stare at the calendar for a few more seconds before going through with the peas.

  ‘I think I need you to call me an ambulance,’ he says as I pass him the peas. ‘I think my foot’s broken.’

  I nod my head.

  ‘The phone’s in the hallway.’

  So I go and make the call, which feels a bit odd. I’ve never had to do something like that before. While I’m doing it, there’s a photo of the Poisoned Dwarf and a couple of other people – family, I guess – staring straight back at me from the wall. Looks like it was taken a long time ago. I look away from it. I don’t want to look at her. I don’t want to be reminded of what I did.

  When I’m done, I go back into the lounge. ‘Do you want me to call anyone else?’

  He looks up, takes the frozen peas off his ankle.

  ‘Have you got any family or anything?’ I say. ‘I could let them know you’re going to hospital.’

  He shakes his head. ‘No. I don’t want to worry them. They’ve been through enough lately. I’ll tell them when I’m out of hospital.’

  That makes me feel awful. I look away – at the floor, at the window, at the walls – anywhere but at him. I want to get out of here as soon as I can.

  ‘You don’t have to hang around,’ the old man says. ‘I’ll be all right on my own.’

  I shake my head even though every part of my being is screaming to get out of here. ‘It’s OK,’ I say. ‘I’ll wait with you. Let me get you something to clean up the cut on your head.’