by Ross Welford
Susan murmurs so that Kez can’t hear. ‘Remember. The dead cannot hurt you. Focus on your real purpose. Focus on Seb.’
‘Hang on. You said …’
‘I know. I am almost certain. But you know …’
Kez has unlocked the double doors and, when she opens them, a soft beeping starts. She turns to us. ‘Wait here. I have to disable the alarm.’ She slips in, and a few seconds later the beeping stops. Kez reappears and the three of us stand for a moment by the slightly opened double doors.
‘All right. Rules,’ says Kez. ‘Half an hour starting from now. No talking to people on the outside. Don’t turn the lights on or you’re disqualified. If it gets too much for you, bang on the door and say, “I’m a scaredy-cat, get me out of here!” Ready? Hand me your phone.’
‘Not giving it to you after last time. Susan can keep it.’
Kez frowns at us both. ‘Fair enough. Doesn’t matter to me. Now – have a look.’
I step forward to put my head through the gap in the doors. That’s when I feel a hard shove in my back as I’m pushed forward into the dark, followed by a loud clunk as the door slams behind me. It’s just like when this whole thing started, when Kez pushed me into Mr McKinley’s backyard.
‘Malky, are you all ri—’ begins Susan.
‘Shush. You’re breaking the rules.’
After that, silence. Even though I know that Kez and Susan are on the other side of the doors, I’m terrified. It would have been scary enough just sitting there with my back against them for thirty minutes. Instead, I have to prowl around in near total darkness, looking for a dead man’s Dreaminator.
The narrow windows just below ceiling height let in a tiny bit of light from outside, but it’s a dark night, anyway, and the only streetlight is broken. I blink hard to try to force my eyes to get used to the blackness and after a little while I work out where I am.
The room I’m in is bigger than it seemed from the outside. There are some lockers like at school, a rail with suits hanging from it, a shelf with top hats, and some low chairs. This must be some sort of changing area or staffroom. There are empty teacups on a little table and a sink in the corner. I start looking around for anything that might give me a clue as to where the Dreaminator is, and pretty soon I conclude that it’s not likely to be here. Not in this space, anyway. There are some head-height kitchen cupboards which I quickly look in, but it’s stuff like mugs and teabags.
A swing door on the other side of the space leads to a wide corridor, also dimly lit by the ceiling-height windows, with three or four doors leading off it, most with little round windows in them. I peer through one: it’s much too dark to see inside. I try the door handle: it’s locked.
I freeze on the spot when a beam of white light passes across the ceiling, followed a second or two later by the deep rumble of a big motorbike turning into the car park.
Kez’s dad!
I scuttle quickly back through the swing door into the staffroom and go up to the door I came in through. I’m about to thump on it and demand to be let out, but I can hear the motorbike only a few metres away. Then the engine goes quiet and there is an adult voice, muffled through the door, but still audible.
‘Hello, love. What you doing here?’
‘Hi, Dad. Just walkin’ Dennis. He chased a ball and it went round this side.’
Mr Becker chuckles. ‘Chased a ball? That’s something new. I’ve not seen him get above walking pace.’
His voice is getting nearer and I hear the jingling of keys followed by Kez’s squeaked question.
‘You’re not going in there, are you?’
‘Erm … yeah, love. Why sh—’
‘Only … Mam was asking for you. I think. You should see what she wants. First, like.’
‘Aye, well, your mam can wait a minute longer, can’t she? I just have to get something from the office. Don’t look at me like that. What’s wrong with you? Go on, off you go back home. Yes – now, Kezia. Scram. Beat it.’
By the time I hear the key in the lock, I’m in full-on terror. There is nowhere – nowhere – in the staffroom that will conceal me if he turns the light on, which he is certain to do.
The swing door is still moving and creaking behind me as Mr Becker comes through the main door, and I’m standing in the corridor, which is now lit up as he turns the building’s interior lights on. If he comes down here to get to the office at the other end, he’ll find me.
There are four doors leading off the corridor. The first one I already know is locked. I try the second one: that is locked too, and I just know what will happen when I try the others. I can hear Mr Becker’s footsteps coming across the staffroom floor.
The third door is locked as I expected. The fourth door has no window and it … opens.
I slip through it and almost squeal out loud. In front of me, dimly lit by a single candle burning in a holder, are three coffins. Each one is on a waist-high trolley with wheels. The one furthest from the door has a pleated curtain round the base, concealing the metal and wheels of the trolley.
I hear the swing door creak at the end of the corridor. Mr Becker’s footsteps are getting closer and I realise I have left the door open, but it’s too late to go back. For a second, I freeze, but, as the footsteps draw alongside the doorway, I dart behind the far coffin and slip under the trolley’s curtain.
He stops at the door and goes, ‘Oh my goodness me,’ in a weary tone. ‘What have we here?’
He can’t know I’m here, can he? I’m crouched under a coffin behind a curtain: he can’t see me. Unless he can hear my heart thumping and that is a distinct possibility.
Then I hear the beep-beep-beep of a mobile-phone keypad.
Mr Becker is standing next to me now. If I angle my head down, I can just see the toes of his biker boots where the curtain doesn’t reach the ground.
‘Terry? Yes, it’s me.’ His voice is not loud, but I can tell he’s not pleased. ‘I’ve just come back to the site to pick up that paperwork and guess what? Not only was the alarm not set, but the door to Store Two was unlocked, and you’ve left a flippin’ candle burning! A naked flame. Well, sorry doesn’t quite cut it, Terry. It’s a massive fire risk. We’re running a funeral home here, Terry, not a bloody crematorium. Yeah, well. Consider that your final warning.’
He tuts as he ends the call, then I hear him blow out the candle and leave the room, locking it behind him, and …
… locking me in.
As Mr Becker’s footsteps die away, I find I cannot move. Ever heard of people being ‘paralysed with fear’? Well, that’s me. I never thought it could be real, but every time I try to move I freeze up. I’m locked in a dead-dark room with three coffins that have to contain dead people otherwise what are they doing here? It is as though my brain is telling my limbs: So long as you don’t move a muscle, nothing bad will happen.
I feel like throwing up, and I try to fight the urge to sob, but it doesn’t work and I let out a quavering wail of terror. When I realise that my wail of terror actually sounds like the woo-ooo-ooo of a Halloween ghost, I let out something that is a bit like a laugh and a scream. I’m crouched under a coffin in total darkness, making these lunatic noises, and I’m a mess.
I guess it helps, though. When I finish, I wipe my face with the curtain, pull it aside and take a deep breath. I crawl out from under the trolley and the room is blacker than black. There are no windows – not even in the door to the corridor – so I really can’t even see my hand in front of my face.
The smell of the candle that’s just been put out gives me an idea. I grope around until I find it. It’s in a metal holder on a little table and on the table is – oh, the relief! – a box of matches. Trembling, I take one out, and use it to relight the candle.
I wonder if I preferred it when it was completely dark? Now I can see the three coffins: a white one with flowers painted on it, a black, shiny one with brass handles, and the one that I was hiding under. This is a simpler one in plain wood.
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br /> I ease the candle from its holder and bring it over to the coffins. My hand is shaking so much that little bits of melted wax are splattering on the coffin lids, while dark shadows skip and hide in every corner. Each of the coffins, I see, has a pink Post-it note stuck on the lid.
I hold up the light to read the first note on the black coffin. It says, simply, Mr D. Dyson. The next one reads Mrs E. Armstrong. I swallow hard, because I know what the one on the wooden coffin – the one I was hiding under – will say. Sure enough, there it is.
Mr K. H. McKinley.
Before I open the lid, I carefully look round the rest of the room, in case there are boxes of stored items, or shelves or cupboards …
Nothing.
I have lost track of time. I don’t know when – or for that matter if – Kez will be back. But I know that the only chance of getting the Dreaminator is to open the wooden lid and find out if it’s there.
With one shaking hand, I hold the candle up; with the other, I nudge the lid, half hoping that it is fastened down so that I won’t have to do what comes next. It isn’t, though: it moves. I squeeze my fingers under the edge, lifting and pushing until the lid slides away, and I glimpse the white satin lining of the box.
I turn my head. I can’t even watch what I am doing with my own hands. My eyes are screwed shut and I push too hard. The coffin lid clatters to the floor causing a tremendous noise in the small room and I drop the candle, but it doesn’t go out.
I bend to retrieve it, and rise up slowly, slowly, panting with terror at what I might see. Swallowing hard, I peer in.
There’s nobody. More important, there’s no body, and I breathe out with relief: a sort of wobbly sigh.
The coffin’s not empty, though. Oh no. Right there, resting in the centre of the shiny white satin, is the world’s last Dreaminator.
Then I hear footsteps outside again. I grab the Dreaminator and crawl back beneath the curtain.
The doorknob rattles.
‘Malky! Malky! You in there?’
I’m not sure I’ve ever been more relieved to hear someone’s voice.
‘Susan! Yes! I’m here!’ I’m up against the door, but it won’t budge. ‘Don’t you have a key?’
‘Only to the outside door. The alarm is going to go off any …’
Her last words are drowned out by the piercing wheep-wheep-wheep of a delayed intruder alarm. I do a quick calculation. How long will it take Mr Becker to hear that and come downstairs to investigate? Thirty seconds? A minute? Not even that.
There’s just no way I’m going to be caught stealing from the coffin of a dead man! I’m still holding the candle and I ram it back into its holder.
‘Stand back!’ I shout to Susan. ‘And get ready to run!’
I shove the Dreaminator down my zip-up jacket. Then I grab one end of the wheeled trolley supporting the biggest, heaviest coffin – the black one – and drag it to the far end of the room. I run, pushing it in front of me. I haven’t got long to pick up much speed – maybe five metres – but the weight must help, because the trolley crunches into the door, busting the lock immediately and springing the door open a little. I pull the trolley back and ram it into the door again, forcing it open with a loud bang. The coffin is blocking my exit now, but there is space above so I hop up on to it, and crawl over the top, landing in a pile at Susan’s feet. Already I can hear the front door being opened in the reception area.
Susan and I don’t talk. Instead, we run – back along the dark corridor, through the staffroom, out of the back door into the rear car park.
The only exit from the car park is the passageway past the reception block. Otherwise there’s a wall – a high wall – and on the other side a steep embankment leading down to the old railway line which is now a cycleway. We have no choice. I leap on to the bonnet and then the roof of one of the hearses, which buckles under my weight, but it gets me high enough to grab the top of the wall.
‘Come on,’ I say to Susan. ‘You can do it!’
‘I know,’ she says and follows me as we both scramble over, landing on the other side in a huge blackberry bush, which snags our clothes and rips our skin as we struggle to get free and down the embankment to the cycleway. I feel something crack beneath my jacket, but I can’t stop to check.
Have we been followed? I don’t think so. I have heard no shouts, though the intruder alarm is still wailing behind us.
‘This way,’ I say, pointing in the direction of North Shields, a couple of kilometres away.
And so we run along the track, past back gardens and through a gap in the fence, which tears a long rip in my jacket, and we’re in the playground of Seb’s primary school, and still we don’t stop till we’ve climbed over the spiked railings and we’re at the end of the back lane of Susan’s street with her rear gate to our left and my house a bit further on.
It’s pretty dark at this end, and there’s a patch of grass where I sink to my knees, my chest heaving. With shaking hands, I take out the Dreaminator and examine it. One of the pyramid sides has been bent, and there’s a crack in the bamboo hoop, but it’s otherwise all right. I hope. Susan is less puffed-out that I am, although she’s just as scratched and filthy.
You okay?’ I say after a moment, and she nods. ‘Thanks for getting me.’
‘Kezia just left you!’ she says in a tone of disbelief. ‘When her dad turned up on his motorbike, she tossed me the keys and told me to make myself scarce and to put them back when I was done. I am sorry. I had to wait until her dad had gone from the front office, and he had reset the alarm. What a … what a …’
I’m waiting for Susan to choose her insult for Kez Becker. I have never heard her say anything nasty about anyone.
I still haven’t. She finishes her sentence with a tut and a shake of her head, and hands me back my phone.
I turn it on and stare at it while it boots up. I’m still panting a little – more, I think, from nerves than exhaustion.
‘Oh no,’ I say and Susan crouches down next to me.
‘What’s wrong?’
Eleven missed calls: all from Uncle Pete. Plus two voicemails, and three text messages. Reluctantly, I click on messages. This can’t be good news.
Where are you?
Please call – urgent.
Come home now, or I am coming to get you.
That last one was only five minutes ago. I can’t call him, I don’t dare. Instead, I send a text back.
Sorry. Phone battery died. On my way back.
It’s a poor excuse but it’ll have to do.
Susan and I face each other on the scrappy patch of grass.
‘Do I look as rough as you?’ I ask, taking in her mud-streaked, torn clothes, her hair which for once is filthy and messed up, and a deep thorn-scratch on her cheek.
She smiles. ‘No. You look great! Tiptop. Never looked better.’
We both chuckle nervously before a slightly awkward pause.
She says, ‘Good luck.’ Then she leans in and hugs me, pinning my arms to my sides so I can’t hug her back, even though I was going to.
‘Do you know what you have to do when you use the Dreaminator?’ she says.
‘Not really.’
Susan chews her cheek in thought. ‘Go to the edge of your dream and then go further. That is what Mola said.’
‘Do you even know what that means?’
Susan smiles her closed-mouth smile and says, ‘Not really. Sorry.’ We stand facing each other for a moment, then she says, ‘Good luck,’ again before turning and walking away and I do the same.
I’ve gone about ten metres when she calls my name and I look back. ‘I might see you there,’ she says. I nod and wave, not really understanding or even sure that I heard right.
She might see me there? See me where?
But I soon forget about that. Uncle Pete is standing on the front step when I turn up our little driveway, and he does not look happy.
I’m lying on my bed.
Sleep? You’ve
got to be kidding. I feel like I have crammed about a week into a whole day, and, if you imagine that that will make me tired, then let me tell you: I am about as far from sleepy as it’s possible to be.
Uncle Pete hadn’t known what to do, and for that I’m pretty glad.
When I turned up looking like I did, with the Dreaminator concealed under my jacket, Uncle Pete was confused. He’s been firm with me before, and once raised his voice at Seb, but I honestly don’t think he’s ever had to tell me off. The confusion was written all over his face, and I decided I would have to bluff this out.
What choice did I have?
‘What the blazes happened to you?’ he said. ‘And where’ve you been? Me and your Mormor have been worried sick. I was on my way out to come and get you.’
Mormor was just sitting on the sofa, shaking her head slightly in sorrow or disapproval: it’s hard to know which.
To be fair, I felt a bit sorry for them: as well as confused, they did look pretty upset. I could tell Uncle Pete was angry, but he doesn’t have kids of his own, so …
I bluffed. I lied, in other words. I made up some story about Susan’s guinea pig escaping, and having to chase it all round her garden, and I knew he’d never be able to check it out.
I hung my head. ‘Sorry, Uncle Pete. I didn’t mean to worry you,’ I said in a really small voice.
(Ooh, I hate having to do that. It’s so effective on people without kids, yet strangely ineffective on parents and teachers.)
Mormor tutted and muttered something in Swedish, then, ‘Malky, älskling. Your mama and papa have got enough to worry about. Go and get showered and then into bed. We’ll say no more about this. Give me a hug first.’
Oh no. Not a hug. Not when I’m hiding something under my jacket.
‘Kom hit,’ she said in Swedish, opening her arms. ‘Come here!’
I hesitated.
‘What’s wrong with you?’
There was no getting out of it. I leaned into her from a standing position and tried to angle my body away from her, but she kept pulling harder.