Breathe: A Ghost Story (Fiction - Middle Grade)

by Cliff McNish

  Sarah dropped her hand on his shoulder.

  “Let me see.”

  She wiped a thumbprint from the glass, gazing at the picture for a while, then put it carefully back.

  “Just me and you now, eh?” she whispered, resting her hand on Jack’s cheek. “A fresh start. Us against the world.”

  “Yes,” Jack said thickly.

  “It’ll be fine,” she murmured, her hand still there.

  “We’ll make a real home here. It’ll be okay. We’ll be okay. You’ll see.”

  For the next few hours Jack helped her unpack and tidy up. In the afternoon, Sarah decided to build a fire in the living room. “A housewarming,” she said. She used sticks and kindling to get the fire blazing, then perched herself diffidently on one of the squat sofas. For a time both of them gazed into the flames, talking about nothing in particular, just getting familiar with the atmosphere of the place. A grandfather clock ticked noisily away, shattering the peace of the house every fifteen minutes with its sweet chimes.

  Jack’s hands roved all over the arms of his chair. They patted the fabric, stopped, slid on, always seeking something—a constant, reflective, elegant motion. Sarah was used to it, but the habit had cost him dearly. Few close friends, for a start. Who wanted to be seen hanging around with someone whose hands wouldn’t stay still? Jack could control himself if he had to, but whenever he was around old furniture, the second he lost concentration his hands went wandering. Today, though, there was an extra intensity about the way his long fingers travelled. They seemed more sure of themselves.

  “So what’s the verdict?” she asked. “I had to search forever to find a place as old and rundown as this.”

  Jack grinned. “It’s good, Mum. It’ll do just fine.”

  She grinned back. “You’ve always wanted this, haven’t you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “ A really old house. One, preferably, you know, totally falling to bits.”

  Jack nodded ruefully. “Yeah, something . . . I don’t know. . . .” He shrugged, unable to put his feelings into words.

  “Something ancient,” she said, and they both laughed.

  Later, while Sarah drove to the nearest town to find a supermarket, Jack slipped back upstairs. Everything about his bedroom—the coving, the old flock wallpaper, even the scuffed bare floorboards—intrigued him. He levered his toes up and down on the wooden boards, enjoying the creak. Lots of people had walked around this room.

  But it was the bed that attracted him most of all. He let his hands wander over it, plumping the pillows, stacking them on top of each other. That seemed right, for some reason. He made an adjustment of the bedspread, folding it across in a crisp triangle. Every morning, the last person who slept here put the sheets across like this, he suddenly realized. Neatly. Even though there was no one else to see it. And no duvet. Whoever slept here preferred blankets. She preferred blankets.

  It was a woman.

  She died here, he suddenly realized. An old woman. In this bed. And she was lying here, where my hand is, when it happened.

  Jack trembled, shocked that he could discover so much. Except for the traces left by his dad in the old house, he’d never picked up the presence of death before. It was as if his own dad’s death had sensitized him to them. His fingers strayed over the mattress, telling him more. Three blankets in winter, he realized. And two sheets. That’s what she liked. She lay between two sheets on the evening she passed away.

  He jumped away from the bed, frightened by the clarity of it all. He didn’t like this. It reminded him far too much of what had happened to his dad. Not wanting to think about that, he left, glanced around his mum’s room, then checked out the third bedroom. It was the smallest bedroom in the house, unused for years, and empty. Even so, he felt drawn to it. Why? Was there more death here?

  The door handle was a recent replacement. No interesting sensations, save a trace from that arthritic hand again. Jack was sure now that the hand belonged to the woman who had died. She was in pain for a long time, he thought. But only slight pain. And she opened doors gently. She was a mild woman. A quiet one. He felt the hesitant shuffles of her small feet on the floor, and smiled.

  Then, holding his breath, he stepped cautiously into the third bedroom.

  In one corner there was an ancient cobweb. In the middle of the cobweb lay a mummified spider. It was as Jack set off across the room to study it more closely that a strange tingle made him stop. It felt as if he had touched something—or something had touched him. The sensation was like the nail of a small finger brushing across his back.

  With every hair rising on his neck, he turned.

  To see only the doorway and the empty landing.

  You little baby, he thought. Stop being jittery. There’s nothing there.

  The room had a single low rectangular window, barely large enough to contain the face of a child. Jack felt drawn to it, but the view was disappointing. Just some fields, the edge of a wood and a horizon. A weed-ridden back garden stared sadly up at him. There were no other houses or people in sight. The farmhouse was isolated by acres of wheat and barley fields.

  The window was dust-encrusted. Before clearing it for a better look, Jack reached into his jeans, whipped out his inhaler, and took a squirt. Dust didn’t normally set off his asthma, but he’d had a bad attack recently and didn’t want to take any chances. Then he put his face up against the cold glass. As soon as he did so he stepped back, stunned.

  Another person had also been here, face pressed up against the window. Someone who’d been here for a long time. Someone who stared out for years and years.

  “Who were you?” Jack said out loud. “What were you doing here so long on your own? Were you a prisoner in this room?”

  A spattering of raindrops dribbled down the window-pane. Without him being aware of it, Jack’s hands made full contact with the glass. He felt it. When he touched the frame, the taste of blood came into his mouth.

  With a cry of disgust, he jumped back, but his hands were already guiding him to the floor. They stroked the bare wooden boards feverishly, rubbing the skin nearly raw on his thumb. Something was here, next to the window, he realized. A chair? Yes. This is where you sat, isn’t it? he thought. For years, you hardly left a chair.

  He nervously returned to the window, gripping the frame tightly with one hand. His other hand settled on the floor, making slow purposeful motions.

  And suddenly, as he looked up, Jack saw not the window but a slim woman, wandering between flowers in the garden. But it was not the garden he knew, it was that of the distant past, and the woman wore an old-fashioned dress that was black, as if she was in mourning. Beneath the dress she wore outdoor stockings and hobnailed boots, and she was young and very much alive, this woman, perhaps twenty-five years old, and Jack’s heart leapt, wondering who she was. Her thick dark hair was stuffed under a bonnet, also trimmed with black. It was the same garden Jack knew, too, but larger, given over mostly to crops. Chickens scratched about in a clear patch, and there was a pig.

  As Jack waited for something to happen, a little girl emerged from a side entrance to the cottage. She skipped down the garden path.

  It’s her, he realized. The person from the chair. He was sure of it.

  The girl wandered between different and delicate flowers, throwing weeds into a front bib tied to her black pinafore. She and the woman—so obviously her mother now—laughed occasionally while they worked, but Jack couldn’t tell what they were saying. A brown-and-white terrier puppy followed the girl around, wagging his tail with excitement. It was a warm summer’s day, and at one point a breeze lifted up the girl’s lengthy auburn hair, making her giggle. Her mother caught several strands, wrapping them around a thumb and two fingers of her hand. Then she bent down to kiss her.

  Back in the empty bedroom, still touching the floor and window frame, Jack felt happy, without knowing why. Gradually he realized it was because the girl and her mother, in that moment, had
been so happy.

  Then a cough started up in the girl’s throat.

  It began innocently enough, just a little cough that would stop any second. But from the first hint of it, the first clearing of the girl’s throat, her mother was horrified. Jack couldn’t understand why. She grasped her daughter, pulling her into the folds of her dress.

  The girl continued to cough. In embarrassment, half laughing, she hid her face in her hands. But the cough wouldn’t stop. It just kept on and on, and finally she was coughing so hard that she could barely catch her breath. She fought to get away from her mother, suddenly, to reach some space, some air, lifting her head, mouth open wide, and briefly recovered. Then another coughing fit overtook her, worse than the last, and her eyes were wide, moist and frightened.

  “Mother!”

  It was the first word Jack heard clearly, and it came out of the little girl more like a scream than a word. It made him want to scream as well, it was so heartfelt, and as she screamed a second time something splashed from her mouth.

  Something.

  The coughing fit was at an end.

  The girl sank into the arms of her mother until she had her breath back. Then she felt the sticky area around her mouth.

  “Mother?”

  The girl lifted her hand to show her.

  “It’s nothing,” her mother rasped, not even looking at it, deliberately not looking. “Be still, now. It’s nothing at all.”

  The girl glanced inquisitively down at her hand.

  In the middle of her palm was a single bright red drop of blood.

  “Jack?” said a frightened voice behind him.

  With the taste of blood still in his mouth, Jack got up shakily from the floor, both arms trembling.

  Sarah stood at the door.

  “Come here,” Jack said huskily.

  “What were you doing?”

  “Just come here, Mum.”

  Sarah had never seen Jack behaving like this before—his hands wild, so animated.

  “Who do you think might have been in this room?” he asked.

  “It’s tiny.” She shook her head. “It’s hard to imagine anyone staying here.”

  “Too small for an adult, yes. But what if it was a child? A little girl.”

  “A girl?”

  “Someone stuck here, who looked out of this window for years. Someone who could do nothing else, she was so ill.”

  “Jack . . . what . . . what makes you say that?”

  He rested his fingertips on the windowsill. The bitter aftertaste of blood was still in his mouth.

  “There’s something else, Mum. Do you know what happened in the house just before we came?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, if a woman died here? Died in my room.”

  Sarah tried to make sense of what Jack was saying. The real estate agents hadn’t mentioned anything about a recent death on the property. If they had, following his dad’s death, this was the last place she’d have brought Jack.

  “There are dead impressions all over this house,” he said. His nose was slightly blocked, so he automatically took another dose from his inhaler. “What other rooms haven’t we looked in yet? There must be some.” He strode past her.

  Sarah hesitated, unsure what to do. This was just the sort of behavior Jack had shown when his dad died— rushing all over the house, desperate to be close to everything he’d ever touched. That was understandable; he was just coping with grief in his own way, she knew that, and while dealing with her own sorrow she’d done everything she could to help bring him through it. But as the months passed he had withdrawn further from the real world, not returned to it. He’d taken to staying day and night in his dad’s study—where the traces were strongest and most numerous. On some days he only emerged to eat. On others, he wouldn’t eat at all.

  Sarah had brought him to this house to get away from all those old associations, not to revive them. Oh no, she thought. It’s happening all over again. Jack’s just moved his behavior from there to here. . . .

  She held him. “Listen to me. . . .”

  Jack shrugged her off. “Mum, I’m okay. I just . . . where haven’t we been yet? We haven’t looked in the kitchen, have we?”

  He took the stairs two at a time. The kitchen had been recently modernized, and he groaned in disappointment. Nothing much to help him there, or in the attached scullery. But another room was half hidden at the bottom of the staircase. The cellar. He backtracked to it.

  Pushing the cracked, unpainted door open, he gazed inside. Stale air wafted out. Jack felt his mum arrive behind him, her breath warming his neck. A cooler draft seeped from somewhere nearby and, unseen, a black beetle scuttled between his feet. Sarah thought hard, nervous about where this was leading.

  “It hasn’t been used for years,” she said, getting in front of Jack in case he did something stupid like leap into the darkness.

  “Hasn’t it? You sure?”

  “There’s not even a working light down there. I checked last time I was here.”

  A short flight of wooden steps led into the shadows. Jack couldn’t quite make out the floor of the cellar, but something big was down there.

  “Is that a chair?”

  Peering closely, Sarah could see it as well—an ancient wooden rocking chair. It lay in the corner, one of its leg supports broken.

  “Go on,” Jack said.

  “What?”

  “Go in, of course. Let’s take a closer look. What are you waiting for?”

  He started past her down the cellar steps, but she held him back.

  “Uh-uh. Without a proper light, there’s no way either of us is going down there. The steps are way too steep.”

  “I’ll be okay.”

  “You’ll break your neck.”

  “Mum . . .”

  “No!”

  Jack craned his neck to look over her shoulder. Apart from the rocking chair, he was sure something else was sliding against the darkness. Then a patch of dust irritated his throat, and he had to reach into a pocket for another dose of his inhaler.

  “He sees us!” Oliver shouted. “I’m telling you! Look at him! He’s staring right at us!”

  The four ghost children gazed up from the dimness of the cellar floor. They’d followed Jack and his mother all around the house as best they could.

  “Can he really see us?” Gwyneth gasped.

  “No,” Ann said. “I’ve told you before, no one can. Even if we’d like them to, living people never do.”

  “But he keeps looking at us as if he can see us,” Charlie said.

  Oliver floated up to the second step. “Let’s find out for sure.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m not just sitting down here in the dark. I think I’ll go press myself right up against him. What do you reckon, Charlie? Face to face. Dead face to live face. See if he notices.”

  Charlie stared at Oliver in awe as he floated rapidly to the top of the steps.

  “Out you come. Right now.” Sarah turned Jack sharply around and closed the cellar door. “There’s way too much dust in there.”

  “But—”

  “No. I shouldn’t have to remind you how careful you need to be until we can clean the place up, Jack, the way your asthma’s been lately. Let’s go.” She rested a hand against his chest, shaking her head. “You’re wheezing.”

  “No, I’m not.” But he was—the musty air inflaming his lungs.

  “Come on. Away from this dust pit.”

  Ten minutes later they were both sitting at a small circular dining table in the kitchen, sipping instant coffee. One of Jack’s hands rested on the oak tabletop, his fingers making precise, delicate, exploratory movements. Was he really sensing people who had died in this house? No, Sarah thought. He was only wishing he had, just as he’d wished for so long for his dad to be back with them. She’d tried everything she could to help him overcome his loneliness following his father’s death, shared her own grief
with him, even tried counseling, but nothing seemed to reach him. How many times in the old house had she found Jack lying silently and wide awake in some corner in the dark, with his dad’s things gathered and heaped around him? He can’t go through all that again, she thought. He can’t. If he did, what would his mind be like at the end of it?

  Seeing how nervous it made his mum, Jack didn’t say anything more about dead people for the rest of the day. Instead, he helped her rearrange some of the furniture and tried to put her at ease by talking about how he’d use the last couple of weeks left of school vacation to get out of the house and explore the area. Later, he changed the layout of his room a bit, but really he was only biding his time, waiting for it to get dark. His gift for sensing people was always sharper at night, when household dust settled and everything was quiet.

  Sarah followed him up to his room that evening. Once he was in his pajamas, she tucked him in bed and kissed him lightly on the cheek. But she hesitated at the door.

  “Are you sure about staying in this room? A dead person, Jack . . . it’s no trouble moving you in with me for a while, you know.”

  Jack shook his head.

  “No way you’re moving me out of here now, Mum.”

  She nodded in resignation. “On or off then?” she asked. She reached for the light switch, already knowing the answer she’d get.

  Jack grinned. “Off. Definitely off.”

  As soon as she left, Jack checked that his reliever inhaler was on the bedside table—just in case he needed it in the night—and nestled his head back on the pillows. That drop of blood! What on earth had been wrong with the girl? He wanted to sneak back to her room and spend all night by the window, finding out what he could, but he knew his mum would be on the lookout. If he behaved too weirdly, she’d make him leave. He couldn’t let that happen, not yet. He had to know more.