He eyed me beadily. ‘It’s Dr Bailey to you. Why aren’t you in class?’
‘I’ve been sent to the head teacher, sir.’
His face creased into a forbidding frown. ‘I see. For what reason, may I ask?’
A faint rustle echoed from beyond the curve of the corridor behind him. I glanced over his shoulder uneasily, aware that I appeared to be having a conversation with Mr Nobody. When you were psychic, it went with the territory, but I’d prefer it if no one heard.
Distracted, I stepped closer to him and lowered my voice. ‘I told Sister Margaret I was a Jedi.’
His eyebrows shot upwards. ‘A what? Speak up, child, I can barely hear you.’
I peered into the corridor, gnawing my lip in anxiety. Was there someone there or not? ‘She asked about religion,’ I stage-whispered. ‘I could hardly tell her the truth, could I?’
‘Which is?’
Tilting my head to one side, I stared at him. ‘I talk to dead people. What do you think my religious beliefs might be?’
He drew himself up to his full height. ‘Heresy!’ he boomed. ‘Write out one hundred times, I must not blaspheme and report back to me tomorrow morning.’
This can’t be happening, I decided with an inward groan. Of all the ghosts in all the world, I’d found one who didn’t believe in, well – himself. Next, he’d be telling me he wasn’t dead, he was just between bodies, but this wasn’t the time or the place for a conversation like that. ‘Yes, sir.’
He turned on his heel and stalked away. Before I could start on my way to the head’s office again there was another, louder rustle in the corridor.
‘Who’s there?’ I called.
For a moment I thought I’d imagined it. Then I heard the unmistakable clatter of footsteps heading my way and knew they were too close for me to escape being seen. I stood glued to the spot in the exposed hall, running my conversation with the ghost through my head. Whoever was coming had potentially heard every word I’d said. How in the name of Yoda was I going to explain that away?
Is there some unwritten law of the universe which says whatever can go wrong, will go wrong? If there isn’t, I’d have to invent one. Because when the eavesdropper stepped into the hallway, I was plunged into a maelstrom of simultaneous ecstasy and embarrassment. Of all the people who could have witnessed my spook-tastic encounter, it had to be – just had to be – Mystery Boy. As the emotions slugged it out inside me, my old friend Sinking Dread joined the party when I realised Mystery Boy was staring at me like I’d just landed from Planet Nutjob. Great. Once he’d told all his mates what he’d heard, how long would it be before everyone was looking at me that way?
Once again, my powers of conversation seemed to be on a day trip away from my brain. ‘You.’
He studied me, his features unmoving, and even in the depths of my humiliation, I noticed that eerie stillness extended throughout his body. It was almost as though he was poised to pounce on me at any second. A sly voice in my head whispered that I wouldn’t mind so much if he did.
‘Who were you talking to?’ he asked in a level voice.
The darkness of his stare was hypnotic. I shook off the temptation to lose myself in the inky depths and glanced around guiltily. ‘No one.’
His gaze didn’t waver as he raised an eyebrow. ‘You were. I heard you.’
I kicked my misfiring brain for a decent reply. It wasn’t giving me much to work with. In fact, it seemed overwhelmingly preoccupied with pouting at the sex god in front of me. Plausible reasons for my peculiar behaviour were in short supply.
Feeling my cheeks begin to stain pink, I grabbed the only option I had, ignoring the screeching protest of my mind. ‘Um . . . I was talking to . . . myself.’
‘Yourself?’ His voice dripped with suspicion and I could hardly blame him. For a one-way conversation I’d been pretty animated. ‘What are you, schizophrenic or something?’
Eek. The part of me that wanted to inflict death by snogging let out a despairing cry, but the sensible part realised that a bona fide mental illness sounded way more believable than the truth. I was just glad he couldn’t see my aura. ‘Yeah. Actually, it’s time for, er, my medication, so I should go.’
He watched me in silence again and I stared back, my heart thudding with fear. At least I assumed that’s what it was; it might also have been love.
‘Medication, right,’ he said, drawling out the words in evident disbelief. ‘Only I thought I heard you say something about dead people.’
Panic clutched at my already churning stomach. ‘I didn’t. Isn’t it funny how sound gets distorted in these old buildings?’ My nervy giggle seemed squeaky and shrill over the rushing noise in my ears. ‘Anyway, my medicine is kept in the nurse’s room.’ I waved a hand towards the offices behind me and edged backwards. ‘So . . . um . . . I’d better . . . make like a tree.’
Cheeks burning with excruciating embarrassment, I fled.
‘Wait!’ he called, but I pretended not to hear. As I scurried towards the relative safety of the head teacher’s office I could feel him watching me. I didn’t dare to look back. Make like a tree? Had I really just said that? I hadn’t even delivered the punchline – and leave. In fact, I couldn’t have been more of a loser if I’d had an enormous L tattooed on my forehead. But even more sickening than my Daisy Dork routine was the horrible feeling that Mystery Boy hadn’t believed a word I’d said. I couldn’t decide which was worse; mental illness wasn’t exactly a turn-on in a girl, but neither was the truth. Either way, if Mystery Boy talked, I was sunk. The question was, how far?
‘No need to ask how your day went,’ Celestine said when I slouched through the door after school.
‘Don’t tell me,’ I said, pausing to sniff the flowers she was arranging on the hall table. ‘My aura is filthy black.’
‘Not quite, but it’s pretty close. I’d say cowpat brown. Want to tell me about it?’
Charming, I thought, and considered her offer. Could I bear to go through what was officially the crappiest day of my life again? OK, I’d met the most gorgeous boy in the galaxy, but he thought I was a complete fruit-loop. Would she have any idea how exhilarated and nauseous I felt inside? I watched her fuss over the angle of a disobedient lily and wondered if she’d ever been through the same thing; maybe, but it still didn’t make me feel like baring my soul.
‘Not really,’ I said, puffing my fringe out of my eyes. ‘Although I should probably mention that the head teacher is going to call to discuss my “inappropriate sense of humour”.’
My mum would have flipped. Celestine merely lifted an eyebrow. It made me want to hug her. ‘Oh?’
I didn’t elaborate. ‘And do you have any idea how I go about writing lines for a ghost?’
Now both eyebrows were raised. ‘With paper and a pen, I imagine. Are you sure you don’t want to talk?’
‘Talk about what?’ Jeremy wandered in from the living room and looked questioningly from Celestine to me. ‘Problems at school?’
If Celestine couldn’t help, I doubted Jeremy could. What I really needed was to get online so I could tap into the hive mind of MSN and work out what to do next. But I’d kept my psychic ability a closely guarded secret back in Edinburgh and my mates wouldn’t know a thing about Mystery Boy. The person I needed to speak to was Megan. ‘It’s nothing,’ I said, shaking my head in Jeremy’s direction. ‘Forget it.’
Concern crinkled his forehead and he reached out to touch my arm. ‘You might think we’re practically OAPs, but we are here to help, you know.’
I stared at his sympathetic expression, wondering what he thought he could do. He wasn’t fully psychic like my aunt and me so he couldn’t really understand what it was like to live with the dead on a daily basis. And he definitely wasn’t any help in the coolness stakes; were those actual corduroy trousers he was wearing? Then I dragged my gaze upwards and saw the glitter of compassion in his eyes. He meant well, and his crimes against fashion were nothing a trip to the shops wouldn�
�t fix; maybe I’d give up my lie-in one Saturday and educate him. Dredging up a crooked smile, I said, ‘Thanks, but I think this is something I need to deal with on my own.’
He took the hint and changed the subject. ‘How about a trip to the theatre with me tonight? We ’ve got a comedian doing a month-long run and he’s not half bad.’
It was a definite perk of Jeremy’s job as a lighting engineer at an old West End theatre that he could take occasional visitors along. I’d been a few times already, and despite rumours of a theatre ghost, I’d been blissfully undisturbed throughout the performances. A night of laughter was exactly what I needed. I opened my mouth to say so but my aunt got there before me.
‘Sorry, Jeremy, I have other plans for Skye tonight.’
It was news to me. ‘What plans?’
She shrugged apologetically. ‘I hadn’t got round to telling you about it yet. Why don’t we go and sit down and I’ll explain?’
Fighting the urge to pull out my phone and fire off a text to Megan, I followed her into the living room and perched on the dark leather sofa, wondering what Celestine had planned. I really hoped it didn’t involve Mary; she was taking annoying to a whole new level and had started to hide my make-up bag every morning. Our relationship was colder than Frosty the Snowman’s armpit and, not for the first time, I wished she’d find someone else to haunt.
Celestine jumped straight in. ‘There’s a ghost who’s been hanging around at the Dearly D for about a week now. He never speaks and leaves whenever we try to approach him. I think he wants help, but he doesn’t trust us.’
I wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t unusual for ghosts to find unconventional ways to get attention, which explained why poltergeists existed. The extreme violence they displayed usually stemmed from a deep-seated rage, but often it was a cry for help. Once a psychic was able to communicate with them and uncover the reason for the anger, they were on the road to helping the ghost to move on. It was why the Church of the Dearly Departed was so popular among both the living and the dead – it was the place you went to get answers. Even when you didn’t have the faintest clue what the question was.
I could see where my aunt was heading. ‘So you want me to try and talk to him.’Thinking for a minute, I added, ‘What makes you think he won’t run from me too?’
Her smile was gentle. ‘He’s around your age, maybe a bit older than you. If you can find out a bit about him, perhaps we can help.’
If he was anything like most teenage boys I’d be lucky to get a grunt out of him, but I didn’t say that. Then again, maybe dying young had given him a good reason to distrust the world.
Jeremy shifted on the sofa beside me and I guessed he must be thinking about Lucy, the teenage ghost he’d helped to pass across the year before. She’d been trapped in a toilet on Carnaby Street until Jeremy had arrived and helped her to escape. It had been his one and only psychic experience and although he admitted he’d been terrified at first, he’d also seen how much she needed someone to listen. So he’d stuck around. Without him, she’d still be there – lonely, scared and bored out of her mind. I couldn’t imagine how she’d felt, but the ghost at the Dearly D must know. A stab of pity cut into me and I came to a sudden decision; no one deserved a fate like that. Whoever he was, I’d do what I could to help.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘What time do we need to leave?’
My aunt looked pleased. ‘A round six.’
Leaning back into the sofa, I reached towards the laptop on the coffee table. ‘Excellent, so I’ve got time to go on Facebook?’
Celestine got to her feet. ‘Of course,’ she said as she headed out of the room. ‘But ghostly lines don’t write themselves.’
I prised open the screen and stuck my tongue out at her retreating back.
‘If the wind changes it’ll stay like that,’ she called, without turning round.
As I slumped back into my seat, Jeremy grinned at me. ‘I don’t know how she does it either. Maybe Mary’s been teaching her witchcraft.’
The way Celestine was acting, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was the other way around.
Typically, Megan wasn’t online. One or two friends from Edinburgh were on MSN, though, and we chatted for a while, but Megan’s name didn’t pop up in my chat window before Celestine demanded I log off. I swallowed my frustration; Mystery Boy’s identity would have to wait.
It had been dark a full hour by the time we got to the Dearly D, but the chilly February night didn’t put anyone off coming to the service. As usual, there was a crowd outside the entrance, but to the average passerby, the pavement looked pretty empty. I nodded to a few of the regulars, both the living and the faintly glowing dead, as we went inside. Sometimes we saw the same faces for months on end before we found a way to help them, sometimes they were gone much more quickly. But even the newest arrivals soon learned to respect the privacy of the psychics who worked there and never approached them outside of the service for help. So, although there were plenty of waves and nods as we made our way down the aisle to the front of the church, no one stood in our way. I didn’t see anyone matching the description of the ghost I was there to help.
‘Where does he usually sit?’ I asked Celestine once we’d greeted the other psychics and taken our seats at the bottom of the altar steps.
‘It varies,’ she said. ‘He’s sat in the middle pews once or twice, but most of the time he stays at the back.’
When I’d been younger, I’d wondered why ghosts didn’t just sink through furniture. Celestine had explained that the habits of their physical existence were so engrained that most people stuck with them even after their death. So they tended not to zoom around the ceiling and treated the world pretty much like they had when they were alive. They regularly walked through walls, of course, but who wouldn’t? It had to be easier than opening doors. ‘And he never speaks?’
‘Not even to the younger ghosts. I’m hoping that he’ll spot you and feel able to open up.’
It was as likely as hell freezing over, but I nodded and scanned the church. The pews were filling up but teenagers were few and far between. Maybe Celestine was right and all Mr Distrustful needed was a friendly face his own age to talk to. I didn’t have much else to offer him.
It wasn’t until the service was in full swing that I felt Celestine nudge me. I glanced over and she tilted her head fractionally towards the left of the church. My gaze roved along the rows of the living and the dead until it came to rest on one ghost in particular. Younger than most of the congregation, he was slouched in an empty pew, his hood up and arms folded. Even from a distance I could see the look of sullen distrust on his black face. If he’d still had an aura it would have screamed, ‘Get lost’.
He caught me staring. Feeling as though I’d somehow been intruding, I fought the instinct to look away and instead offered him the tiniest of smiles. He didn’t return it, just stared back at me and raised his chin in mute challenge. So, that was how he wanted to play it – a staring match, the first to blink or look away being the loser. Without breaking eye contact, I settled back in my seat; I’d played this game a hundred times before at my old school, although admittedly never against a ghost, who wouldn’t have the disadvantage of feeling their eyes turning into pickled onions. But he was offering me a way to win his respect so I ignored the twitching in my eyelids and matched his dead-eye stare.
Seconds ticked past and turned into minutes. Then, just as I reached the point where I thought my eyes were going to burst out of my head with the pressure, he looked away. I slumped in my seat and blinked frantically, while the service carried on oblivious around us. When I opened my eyes again, the ghost was heading towards the back of the church. I shifted in my seat but Celestine laid a discreet hand on my arm.
‘We’ll be breaking for individual consultations in a minute,’ she murmured. ‘Go after him then.’
Fiddling with the zip on my jacket, I waited. What if I’d misread the signs and he was out of sight by the time
I got outside? I’d have missed my chance and he might not give me another one.
I needn’t have worried. He was waiting for me in the cold night air, leaning on a low brick wall opposite the church and pretending he wasn’t watching the door. The street-light flickered on and off, making the soft luminosity around the ghost more noticeable. I hesitated for a nanosecond, trying to work out a plan, then decided I’d have to wing it. Thrusting my hands into my pockets, I crossed the empty road and stopped about a metre away.
‘All right?’ I said, injecting casual indifference into my voice while wondering whether he was going to answer.
He stared down at the ground for a full minute before he replied. ‘S’up?’
I let out the breath I’d been holding. If he’d ignored me it would have been game over. ‘Not much. I’ve just come out for some fresh air. It gets proper stuffy in there.’
A frown furrowed his forehead. ‘You’re not from round here.’
‘I’m from Edinburgh. I’ve just moved down.’
The silence stretched between us, but it wasn’t up to me to break it. We were playing by his rules and instinct told me it was his move. Sure enough, after a few more seconds he spoke again. ‘You one of them psychics?’
‘Yeah.’
He looked at me then, his face a mixture of resentment and curiosity. ‘It must be well weird, seeing dead people everywhere. I never even knew they was there, before I died.’
You and the rest of the world, I thought. ‘I’ve always been able to see them. You get used to it after a while.’ I gave a tiny laugh. ‘I was best mates with one when I was really little.’
A look of surprise crossed his face. ‘For real?’
‘She was called Poppy. I talked to her all the time. Everyone thought she was an imaginary friend. It wasn’t until my aunt came to visit and saw us together that my mum found out the truth.’
And practically had a fit when she realised I was psychic, but I didn’t mention that part. She’d calmed down over the years, but I don’t think she ever got over the shock of realising I had the gift when she didn’t.
Tamsyn Murray-My So-Called Haunting Page 3