by Gordon Snell
THE SUPERMARKET GHOST
Gordon Snell
Illustrator: Bob Byrne
For dearest Maeve, with all my love
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
About the Author
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE
The day Maria O’Malley first saw Davy had begun like an ordinary day. She was with her father, Mike, as he carried the big wooden tray of fresh loaves into the shop. It was the first week of the summer holidays and Maria had agreed to help her dad with his deliveries. She knew that her parents thought that she’d be bored around the house – summer camp wasn’t starting for another two weeks. Maria enjoyed helping her dad, but she didn’t like going into Paddy Breen’s supermarket. Her dad had told her to cheer up, so Maria put on an eager smile as she walked beside him towards the shelves. Maria was wearing a t-shirt, three-quarter length jeans and new trainers.
‘That smells good, Mike,’ said Paddy Breen, the supermarket manager.
‘Baked this morning as usual,’ said Mike O’Malley. Paddy called it a supermarket, though it was not really big enough to deserve the name. It had four central rows of shelves, as well as shelves at the side and back, and only one check-out counter near the door. Paddy’s assistant, Rose, worked on the check-out. Rose acted like a princess and was more interested in her appearance than serving customers. Her hair was scraped back in a pony tail, and she always wore large, silver hoop earrings. Rose loved reapplying lip gloss and admiring her reflection.
Paddy Breen liked to think of himself as a big man in the town. He was on the council. He also owned a small garage and a number of houses that he rented out. He was a tall man with a round belly that stretched the jacket of the brown tweed suit he always wore. He was balding, with sandy-coloured hair and a rugged face. Paddy looked down at Maria as she followed her father into the store.
‘I see you’ve brought your little helper with you today, Mike.’ he said.
‘I wouldn’t be without her,’ said Maria’s father.
They went in, and he began to stack the loaves on to the empty shelves.
‘Wait here, Maria, while I get another tray from the van,’ said her father.
Maria gazed at the shelves along the back of the shop. There were lots of bags of flour: cream flour, baking flour, self-raising flour … She wondered why there were so many different kinds. Maria was busy looking at her new trainers and twirling her plastic bracelet when she suddenly noticed a boy about her own age. He was wearing a dark-blue sweater, fraying at the sleeves, and he had long, scruffy fair hair. He smiled, and began running his hand along the bags of flour in front of him. Maria hadn’t seen him before. Perhaps he was Paddy Breen’s nephew helping to stack the shelves, she thought. The boy was pointing at one of the bags of flour, and then at Maria. Then he beckoned to her.
‘What’s up?’ Maria asked, going across to him.
He pointed to the bag of flour again, and then held out his hands.
Maria was annoyed.
‘Can’t you get it down for yourself?’ she asked.
The boy didn’t answer. He put a finger to his lips in a hushing gesture. Perhaps he was a bit dim, she thought. So with a shrug, she took the bag of flour from the shelf and put it into his hands. It seemed to fall right through them. It landed with a thud and split open, spilling the flour on the floor.
‘You clumsy eejit!’ said Maria.
The boy didn’t seem to care. He just stood there and put his hands on his hips and grinned at her. Maria thought that he really couldn’t be right in the head.
‘Aren’t you going to clear it up?’ she asked. ‘Mr Breen will blow his top. Here, I’ll help you, before he sees.’
She knelt down and began to scoop the spilt flour towards the bag with her hand. The boy didn’t move. As Maria looked closer she noticed that his feet were bare.
‘What’s going on?’ Paddy Breen appeared, followed by Maria’s father carrying another tray of loaves. They both looked at Maria and the bag of spilt flour on the floor.
‘Look at that!’ said Paddy Breen. ‘Kids! You can’t leave them alone for five minutes. Get a dustpan and brush from Rose at the cash-desk, and clear it up.’
‘There’s no need to talk to my daughter like that,’ said Maria’s father. ‘I’m sure it was just an accident.’
‘She shouldn’t have been messing around with the shelves.’
‘But I wasn’t,’ said Maria, ‘it wasn’t my fault.’
‘Well, whose fault was it, then?’ Paddy Breen sneered.
‘It was that boy. I handed the bag to him and he dropped it,’ Maria said, turning around to show them the boy.
‘What boy, Maria?’ asked her father.
‘Him!’ she said, pointing, but the boy wasn’t there.
‘There’s been no one else in the shop since you first came in,’ said Paddy Breen.
‘But he was standing just there.’
Maria looked puzzled and stared at the back of the shop and the place where the boy had been. She went to the corner and looked up the next aisle. It was empty.
The boy had simply vanished.
CHAPTER TWO
Paddy Breen was outside the shop the next morning when Maria arrived with her father. Maria’s father was carrying the morning’s tray of fresh loaves. Paddy was talking to a carpenter who was on a ladder, doing some repairs to the sign above the door, which said: ‘BREEN’S SUPERMARKET’.
Paddy came towards Maria’s father, making sure to go around the ladder and not underneath it. He thought it was bad luck to walk under ladders. Paddy was superstitious, and thought lots of things were bad luck, like spilling salt or breaking a mirror or seeing one magpie.
‘Morning, Mike,’ said Paddy. ‘I hope your young helper will be a bit more careful today. No messing with the shelves, eh?’
‘But I didn’t …’ Maria began.
‘It’s all right, Maria,’ her father said. ‘She’ll be no trouble, Paddy.’
Maria glared at Paddy Breen, but said nothing. It was so unfair to be blamed for something she didn’t do. If she saw the boy again, she’d tell him off.
And she did see him. When her father went away to get another tray of loaves, the boy was standing in the same place as before, beside the shelves of flour.
But before Maria could speak, he put his finger to his lips. Then he began to move along the shelves at the back of the store. He turned and beckoned her to follow. She hesitated, but then followed him.
Behind the row of shelves against the far wall there was a gap just big enough for someone to squeeze into. The boy edged into it, and moved along between the back of the shelves and the wall. Maria followed, and saw a door in the wall. To her surprise, she saw the boy step towards it, and then vanish! He seemed to have gone straight through the door without even opening it.
Maria’s heart started beating faster. What could be happening? Fearfully, she stretched her hand out to reach the door-knob. She turned it and pushed. With a creak the door opened and she stepped through it.
Maria looked around. She was in a dusty, gloomy room. The only light came from a dirty skylight in the roof. The place was full of old boxes and pieces of broken furniture. Along one wall there was an iron bed with a tattered mattress on it. It looked like an old junk room that no one had used for years.
At first she seemed to be alone, but then Maria saw the boy, standing against the wall. He spread out his hands and, with a shock, Maria heard him speak for the first time:
‘This is where I used to live.’
His voice was light and husky, and sounded almost as if it came from far away.
Maria gazed around. She thought the room looked run down. Imagine living here! As though he read her thoughts, the boy said:
‘This was once my own room. That was a long time ago – many years. I loved it back then. There was a window there. He has blocked it up. I had posters on the walls; lots of games, puzzles, records and books. I had friends over all the time. We had fun.’
‘So what happened?’ Maria asked. Her voice sounded hoarse.
There was a silence. The boy stared hard at her. Then he said:
‘We had to leave: our home, our shop, everything.’
‘This was your family’s shop?’
The boy nodded.
‘Duff’s Grocers. I’m Davy Duff.’
‘I’m Maria. Maria O’Malley.’
‘I know. I’ve been watching you, hoping we might be able to talk.’
‘How old are you, Davy?’ Maria asked. She was a little startled that Davy knew so much about her.
‘I’m nine, the same age as you, Maria.’
Maria gazed at him. Again her heart beat faster. So Davy said he lived here years ago. Yet he had had all those things – games and books, just the kind of things she had now. Maria was afraid to believe it, but it must be true. This was a boy who had lived in another time, but had somehow come back to his old room and his old house. So where was he now? He must be grown-up … or had he never grown up at all? That was the creepiest thought of all – his life had stopped at the age of nine. He would be nine years old for ever.
Maria shivered. Davy looked real enough. And yet he seemed to have gone straight through that closed door. And neither her father nor Paddy Breen seemed to have seen him. How come he knew so much about her? Had Davy come back from his other world just to meet her? And if so, why?
Just then, Davy said:
‘Maria, I need your help.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘My help?’ Maria asked Davy nervously. ‘What for?’
‘I want revenge. I want justice for my family and our old home. It’s because of Paddy Breen … that I’m … like this. I want to scare him!’
‘And your family, your mother and father. Are they …?’ Maria hesitated. She was afraid to ask.
‘Yes. All gone. Thanks to that rat!’ Davy said frowning.
Maria couldn’t believe it. However horrible Paddy Breen was, surely he wouldn’t commit murder.
‘But if he killed you all,’ she said, ‘he wouldn’t be walking around now. He’d be in jail.’
‘He didn’t need to kill anyone. He just made sure we had to give up the shop. He put tins of rotten food on the shelves and put things in the take-away meals. People started complaining, then they stopped coming to our shop altogether. There was nothing we could do. We couldn’t prove anything. In the end my family was desperate. We weren’t making any money and owed money to the bank. Paddy Breen offered to buy us out, at a cheap rate. We just had to do it.’
Maria wondered what happened after that, and how Davy and his parents died. But you couldn’t just ask someone:
‘By the way, how did you die?’
That would sound crazy – but then this whole situation was getting weirder by the minute.
Instead she said:
‘No wonder you want revenge, Davy.’
‘You’ll help, then?’ Davy asked with a hopeful smile.
‘I don’t see what I can do.’
‘First, you can help me find the sign.’
‘What sign is that?’ Maria asked.
‘The wooden sign that used to be over the front door. It was green with big gold letters, saying: Duff’s Grocers. Paddy Breen took it down and put his own sign up.’
‘Perhaps he threw the old sign away,’ Maria suggested.
‘I don’t think so, somehow. Paddy Breen is superstitious. He’d think it was bad luck to throw it out. I’m sure he’s hidden it somewhere – maybe in here.’
‘Have you looked for it here?’ Maria looked around at the boxes and junk piled in the room.
‘I’ve tried, but I can’t move anything, you see.’ Davy went over to a chair, put his hands out and grasped the arms. He raised his hands to lift it, but they just went straight through the wood.
Maria remembered how she had seen Davy himself go straight through the closed door. She suddenly had a shivery feeling as she stared at the boy. He looked real enough, but Maria knew otherwise. She wondered if she was dreaming it all. She shut her eyes tight and then opened them again. Davy was still there, gazing at her.
‘Well?’ he said. ‘Will you help me?’
‘I’ll try,’ said Maria. She opened a big cardboard box and rummaged among the old papers inside.
‘Nothing there,’ she said.
She opened another box, then another. One was also full of dusty papers; the other had a pile of clothes in it. They were frayed and moth-eaten. She held them up one by one: there was a pair of shorts, some trousers, a brown coat like the kind shopkeepers used to wear, and a tweed cap with a peak.
‘That was my father’s,’ said Davy in a quiet voice.
Maria held it out to him. But when he took it, his hand just went straight through it and it fell to the floor. Maria picked it up and dusted it. She looked at Davy. He seemed very sad.
Maria tried to think of something to say. Noticing his bare feet again, she said:
‘We haven’t found any shoes, Davy. What happened to your shoes?’
Davy looked down at his feet and said:
‘Lost in the lake.’
‘How? Were you swimming?’ Maria asked.
Davy just shook his head slowly. He said no more. Maria felt so sorry for him. She said briskly:
‘Come on, let’s keep looking for that sign.’
Davy could only watch as she moved boxes, opened a cupboard, and shifted chairs around. She even looked under the bed. Finally Maria stood up, brushing the dust from her clothes. ‘I’m sorry, Davy,’ she said, ‘it’s not here.’
‘We’ll find it,’ said Davy, ‘but there’s something else we need to do.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Maria. ‘I’ll help you if I can.’
‘I want you to write a letter for me,’ said Davy. ‘A letter to Paddy Breen.’
CHAPTER FOUR
‘What do you want me to tell him?’ Maria asked. She wasn’t sure this was a good idea.
‘Tell him I want justice!’ cried Davy. ‘I want revenge!’ he shouted and punched the air, making Maria jump.
Just then, Maria heard her father’s voice, out in the shop.
‘Maria, where are you? Maria!’
‘I’ve got to go,’ she said quickly, still a bit shaken.
‘But the letter …’
‘Tomorrow,’ said Maria, going towards the door.
‘Tomorrow,’ said Davy. ‘You promise?’
‘I promise.’
Maria opened the door and went back into the shop, and along the narrow passage behind the shelves. She saw her father placing the last loaf on the shelves.
‘I’m sorry I was so long, Dad,’ Maria said.
Her father looked puzzled.
‘Long? What do you mean?’ He looked at his watch.
Maria looked at hers. Startled, she realised it said exactly the same time as when she had followed Davy. Yet she thought she must have spent at least twenty minutes with him. How could no time have passed?
‘Oh, nothing, Dad.’ Maria said
Paddy Breen came up to them and sneered. ‘Well, Ms O’Malley, I see you’ve managed to keep things tidy today. No mess on the floor. Thank you.’
‘She’s always tidy, Paddy,’ Maria’s father said sharply.
Maria was annoyed with Pa
ddy Breen and glared at him. She thought of what Davy had told her, and got even more annoyed.
‘Can I ask you something, Mr Breen?’ she said.
‘Of course. Ask away?’
‘Did you ever know a boy called Davy Duff?’
Paddy Breen looked flustered. ‘Davy Duff? Was that his name? There was a Duff family here, a long time ago.’
Maria’s father laughed.
‘Come on, Paddy, is your memory going or what? Didn’t you buy the store from the Duffs?’
‘Oh, of course, you mean those Duffs. Yes, I did. I just didn’t remember the boy’s name.’
Maria decided to try and test him even more. ‘Was there a sign over the door one time, saying: Duff’s Grocers?’
‘I remember that,’ said her father, ‘but how did you know, Maria? It was years before you were born.’
‘I just heard about it somewhere,’ said Maria. ‘I wonder what happened to the sign?’
‘I’ve no idea!’ snapped Paddy Breen. ‘What does it matter?’
Maria knew it mattered very much to someone. And Paddy Breen might come to think it mattered too, once he got the letter. She hadn’t been sure about Davy’s idea of the letter before, but Paddy Breen’s replies had made up her mind. He deserved to be scared. Now she was excited at the thought of it. She and Davy would really put the frighteners on him!
CHAPTER FIVE
‘I think Paddy Breen’s losing it,’ Maria’s father told her mother as they sat having tea that evening.
‘It’s a pity he didn’t get lost himself,’ she replied. ‘He’s a sleazy creep that one. But how do you mean – losing it?’
‘Well, today he couldn’t remember the name of the Duffs when Maria asked him about them. I had to remind him he’d bought the shop from them.’
‘And there was something a bit shady about that deal, so people said. There were even rumours that he’d messed with the food so customers would stop coming, and the Duffs would have to sell quickly and at a low price.’