by S. C. Ransom
I made a non-committal noise that would convey my feelings to Callum without alarming Dad. As we got into the car I considered the changes in my life. Less than a month ago I had been a perfectly happy, normal teenager, out celebrating the end of my exams. Now I was lying to the police and finding every opportunity I could to be alone with a strange and gorgeous apparition who was summoned by a bracelet I’d found in the Thames. I glanced down at the amulet on my wrist, its fiery stone glinting in the light, and felt overwhelmingly grateful to have found it and discovered its extraordinary power.
I settled back into the passenger seat and couldn’t help smiling as I thought of him. He was tall, dark blond and extremely athletic. I could see him beside me in the mirror or in other reflective surfaces, and hear him when the amulets on our wrists were in the same space, but most of the time I could only feel the faintest of touches as he sat behind my shoulder when we talked. He was a Dirge, a soul caught in a terrible half-life of misery after falling into the River Fleet and drowning. These days the Fleet was mostly covered over, and very few Londoners even realised it was there, but centuries before it had been a busy river running from Hampstead in north London, and something about its water, still flowing into the Thames, had a mysterious power to transform those who drowned in it, though none of the Dirges understood what it was. All they knew was that day after day they were compelled to feed on the happy thoughts and memories that they stole from unsuspecting people and stored in the amulets they all wore. And every night another fierce compulsion drove them back to St Paul’s Cathedral, the place they now called home.
They knew of only one way to end their misery, but it carried a huge price for the living human who trusted them. Callum’s sister Catherine had made me believe that he didn’t really love me. In my despair, she had very nearly succeeded in tricking me into sacrificing myself. She had sucked away every memory I had ever had and left me for dead. I was only alive because Callum had been prepared to risk himself to save me, emptying his own amulet of stolen happiness so he could capture a copy of all my memories as Catherine spooled them out of me. And after she had finally escaped their life of purgatory in an explosion of sparks and died, he gave them back to me, leaving himself with nothing. Every time I thought about it, I felt breathless with love and gratitude. Most of the time, at least around me, he seemed to be able to tolerate the desperate wretchedness that he must be feeling without a good store of the thing that was so essential to him. And he wouldn’t tell me what he was having to resort to in order to refill his amulet. I didn’t want to ask. Whatever he was doing, though, he was as loving towards me as he had been when we had first met.
There was no one else in when we got back to the house, so I didn’t have to spend hours telling Mum all about the police caution. As soon as I could, I ran up to my bedroom to see if he was already there. The bedroom was gloomy from the boarded-up window, but as I slipped on to the chair by my desk, the tingle was back in my arm and a sense of peaceful contentment washed through me. Callum’s face behind my shoulder was perfectly clear in the mirror, his blue eyes sparkling with amusement.
“I like what you’ve done with the place,” he said, surveying the carnage of my bedroom.
“Well, you know, windows are so last year.” I couldn’t bring myself to burden him by recounting my horrible morning. I hated to do anything that might add to the weight of his misery; it could wait until we had more time.
“I can’t believe you sat there and lied so convincingly to that poor policewoman. You obviously have a hidden talent.”
I tried to look ashamed, but failed miserably. I was too happy to see him again. “It was all perfectly true,” I objected. “I did have to get there to save Grace, and I really didn’t know why because I didn’t have any clear idea about what Catherine was going to do. I mean, I guess I could have gone into a little more detail, but she would never have believed it anyway.”
“No, it’s probably not the sort of thing she hears every day.”
“And with Catherine dead and gone we don’t exactly have anyone to pin the blame on.” I paused, wondering if now was the right time to ask a question that had been bothering me. “Did she really hate life over there that much?”
It was Callum’s turn to pause. “She was always really depressed, and I guess she must have been as bad when she was alive. On top of that, existence over here is, as you know, bleak. I guess she was desperate.”
“Given the option, would you all choose to die?”
“Oh yes.” He smiled ruefully. “With a notable exception, there isn’t one of us who wouldn’t take the chance to be released.”
“I can’t believe that you have to live like that. It’s all so, so unfair!”
Callum sighed. “I still can’t help wishing that I had told you everything from the beginning…”
“I know, I know. Then none of this would ever have happened. I believe you might have mentioned that before,” I teased him, trying to lighten the mood. “But at least now we have our regular trips to St Paul’s, and that wouldn’t have happened without Catherine.”
When Callum had saved my life, he had unexpectedly given me the ability to see him – and touch him – as a proper flesh-and-blood human. But only at the very top of the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral. Before the accident the amulet allowed me to see him face to face only under the very centre of the famous dome, and even then I hadn’t been able to touch him. In my opinion it was worth a near-death experience to be able to caress his face, hold his hand, kiss those firm lips … my thoughts wandered off into dangerous territory.
“That is very true,” he agreed, his lips brushing the back of my neck in the reflection. “Although this is great for me, it’s so much better to be able to hold you properly. When can you next make it into town?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe at the weekend. Term will be finishing next week too, so after that it should be easier. I still don’t think Mum and Dad will be keen, though. They’ve been so worried about me since I came out of hospital. I’m going to have to come up with a really good excuse.”
“Hmm. Can you get Grace to help?”
“I’d love to, but I can’t tell her about you. She’ll think I’m mad.”
“I suppose so. I wish you didn’t have to keep things secret from your best friend, though.”
“It’s not so bad. Now she just thinks you’re some sort of cyber-boyfriend.”
I hated lying about Callum to Grace. She and I had shared so much over the years that it was almost impossible to deal with the practicalities of life with Callum without talking to her about it. I had got round the problem by telling her I had met someone I really loved over the Internet, and for now she was happy with that. At last I was able to indulge in a bit of mutual boyfriend-comparing with her. She was getting increasingly impatient to see a photo though, and I was planning to scour the Internet that night for something that would keep her happy.
“I’d like to meet Grace sometime,” Callum said reflectively. “She seems so happy and lively.”
“Steady!” I laughed. “Her happy thoughts and memories might be too much for you to resist!”
“Well, I am an uncontrollable monster, as you know.” He pretended to bite my neck.
“I’m not sure that I want you to meet her anyway,” I said in my best prim voice. “Everyone always loves her and you might end up preferring her to me. After all, it could just as easily have been her who found the amulet.”
“Ah, but it wasn’t though, was it? You were the one prepared to go digging for it.” He fell silent for a moment, remembering. “I still can’t believe that you did find it … and that it found me,” he murmured eventually. “What are the chances of that happening? It could all have been so different.”
I looked into his eyes, which were soft with emotion, and tried not to think of the scenario where I had not pulled the wire out of the Thames mud to find the amulet tied to the end of it. My life would be calm, uncomplicated and, well,
dull really. My mouth started to twitch into a smile.
“You could have got some really sad beachcomber bloke with a metal detector, so think yourself lucky. Besides, there aren’t many people who wouldn’t have run screaming into the sunset once you started talking to them.” I thought back to those uncertain days not so many weeks ago when I really thought that I was losing my mind.
All too soon it was time for Callum to go and start his usual evening task at the local multiplex. His preference for the happy thoughts generated by people watching cheesy comedies meant that he could do quite a bit of gathering pretty quickly in a full cinema. He said that the other Dirges all thought he was crazy. They said that the quality of this superficial happiness wasn’t as good as real happy memories, but it made Callum feel better about what he was doing. And right now he had a lot of gathering to do. He was still trying to get back to a reasonable state of equilibrium by refilling his amulet, but it was obviously difficult; although he tried to hide it from me, there were times when I caught a look of melancholy creeping over his features. Gathering occupied his every moment when he wasn’t with me, whereas I spent every spare moment trying to devise plans that would bring him over to me. How could I change things? I wondered yet again. What new surprises could I get the amulet to reveal that would allow Callum to hold me in his arms somewhere other than the top of the dome? There had to be a way and I was determined to find it.
I knew he needed to go so I smiled broadly at him. There was no point in making him feel any worse than he already did. With a promise to return as soon as possible the next morning he was gone, and my evening stretched ahead of me.
There were only a few days of term left now, and the teachers had mostly given up on setting us homework. They wanted to mark it about as much as we wanted to do it. I had some catching up to do though, as I had spent a lot of time in hospital, so my time was not yet my own.
I stretched and reached for my schoolbag to see if I could remember what I was supposed to be doing. I had been given the afternoon off to go to the police station earlier, but the long list of work I was supposed to cover was waiting for me.
I was just opening up my laptop when my mobile phone rang. I smiled as I shut the lid of the laptop back down again and pressed the answer button on the phone; it was Abbi, so we were bound to chat for ages.
“Hi, Abbi,” I said. “Hey, guess what? The police didn’t prosecute me!”
There was a strange, slightly muffled silence on the other end of the phone.
“Abbi? Are you there?”
“I don’t know how you can talk to me like that, like nothing’s happened!” bit the voice at the other end of the line. “After what you’ve done!”
“I’m sorry … Abbi? Is that you?” The voice was familiar but almost unrecognisable.
“I never want to speak to you again, and once I’ve told the others what you’ve done, I shouldn’t think many of them will want to, either. How could you be so cruel? I thought you were my friend.” Her voice cracked with emotion.
I couldn’t believe this was happening again, and this time with someone I cared about so much.
“Abbi, I have no idea what you’re talking about! What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”
There was a strangled-sounding sob. “How could you do it? How could you?”
“Abbi,” I said gently. “Please, I have absolutely no idea what you mean. Take a deep breath and tell me what I’m supposed to have done.”
There was a short grunt on the other end of the line. “As if you don’t know! Check your e-mail and see if you’ve had a reply from Miss Harvey yet.”
From the headmistress? This was getting more and more bizarre.
“Why would I get an e-mail from Miss Harvey? What on earth would she be replying to?”
“Well, check your sent box and remind yourself, then. I can’t wait to hear what she has to say.”
“OK, OK. Give me a minute. I’m not logged on at the moment.” I wedged the mobile to my ear with my shoulder and opened up the laptop again. I quickly switched it on and opened my e-mail account. It was terribly slow as usual, and I could hear Abbi sniffing in the background. “Right, I’m in. What exactly am I looking for?” I was trying to navigate to the sent folder as I spoke, wondering what I was going to find. Then I saw it, part-way down the list, a message with the subject line Abbi Hancock. I quickly opened it and scanned the contents, feeling more and more horrified as I went down the page.
“What on earth…? Abbi, what’s all this about? How did this happen?”
“Oh, stop pretending!” she snapped. “Why would you do this to me? You’ll get me expelled!”
“I … I haven’t done anything, Abbi. I promise!” I needed some time to work this out. “Look, give me a minute will you? Let me read it properly at least.”
The e-mail was long. It was addressed to Miss Harvey, and was a comprehensive list of all Abbi’s school misdemeanours over the years, none of which she had been punished for as she was brilliant at appearing innocent. They ranged from breaking windows, putting green food dye in the swimming pool on St Patrick’s Day, skipping school and, most recently, burning the toast in the common room, which had brought the fire brigade out again. Sending an e-mail like that was the kind of thing no friend would do, and I could feel a creeping horror as I realised why she was so upset. It had come from my e-mail account, addressed to Miss Harvey, and whoever had sent it had copied Abbi in for good measure. It was vicious. “Abbi, what can I say? It really wasn’t me. You must know I’d never do anything like this. Someone must have hacked into my account.”
“Really?” she sneered. “So explain the bit about the swimming pool? You’re the only person I ever told about that – the only one. Explain that! And don’t think you can talk me round. Miss Harvey is going to annihilate me tomorrow. She’s been waiting to pounce on someone for weeks about the toast and you’ve just handed me to her on a plate. But before she gets to me I’m going to let absolutely everyone know just what sort of a friend you really are!”
My mind was racing as she spoke, and then I noticed something: I checked the e-mail addresses at the top, and looked again a bit more closely. The address was wrong, with an “n” instead of an “m” in the middle of it. Abbi obviously hadn’t spotted it. I quickly opened my inbox and there, part way down was a message saying that the e-mail had been returned undelivered.
“Abbi!” I shouted over her. “The e-mail didn’t get to Miss Harvey – it bounced back. She won’t know anything about it.”
I could hear tapping as Abbi scanned through her inbox, and an audible sigh of relief; she had seen the mistake in the address. Her secrets were still safe. But the sigh was followed by a prolonged silence.
“Abbi, are you still there?”
Nothing.
“Abbi, speak to me.”
“If this is your idea of a joke,” she hissed, “you’ve got a really sick sense of humour. Have you any idea what I’ve been going through since I read that e-mail? I didn’t have you down as cruel, but now I know better. Don’t speak to me tomorrow, or ever again for that matter.” The phone went dead.
I sat back, appalled, staring at the handset. Fear clutched at my stomach again. What was going on?
The next morning at school Abbi blanked me completely, but she didn’t seem to have told the others about the e-mail. I tried to talk to her a couple of times but she kept turning her back and eventually I gave up. At lunchtime I found a quiet part of our corner of the common room to sit, and kept my head down. The thought of that e-mail kept coming back to me, and every time it made my stomach flip. I couldn’t imagine the trouble Abbi would have been in if it had actually arrived. After she had called I had scoured through my e-mail account to see if I could find any clue to what had happened, but the only thing that was unusual was the deleted items folder. It was completely empty, and I wasn’t able to recover any items either; someone must have wiped everything when they’d hacked into it. I changed the
password to something obscure and hoped that it would be enough, wishing that I could talk through the whole thing with Callum.
He didn’t usually arrive unannounced at school any more. The amount of gathering he had to do kept him pretty busy, and I was keen that he did as much as possible during the day to keep his late afternoons and early evenings free. But I missed having him around; that excitement of when he might appear, the welcome tingle in my arm before he spoke. I let my thoughts drift to the weekend, when I was sure I could find an excuse to get up to London and see him face to face again. We had only been able to meet twice so far, and the logistics were really difficult, but it was worth it to hold him and feel his strong arms around me.
As I relived the memories of our last encounter Grace arrived and squeezed on to the beanbag next to me.
“Hiya,” she said. “You’re very quiet today. What’s up?”
I smiled briefly. “Oh, I’m all right, I suppose. I seem to have upset Abbi though, so now she’s not talking to me.”
“Oh, no! What have you gone and done now?” Grace laughed.
“It’s not funny, and I haven’t done anything!” I told her indignantly. “Can I tell you about it later? I don’t really want everyone earwigging.”
“OK, course. You can fill me in at Eloïse’s party tonight. Now, that’ll cheer you up, anyway. Want a lift?”
Grace had just passed her driving test and her parents had given her the use of a little car, so we were now able to whizz around without involving her dad quite so much. I wasn’t really sure I felt up to a party, not with Abbi going, but I had agreed it with Grace after we had both got out of hospital and we had been looking forward to it.
“I guess. I’m not sure how long I’ll stay though.”
“Are the parents still giving you grief?”
“No, it’s not that, they’re fine about the whole thing. I’m just not sure I want to spend the evening with…” I nodded my head towards Abbi. “Or, more to the point, if she’ll want to spend the evening with me.”