Charley (6 page)

‘Pregnant?’ I cried. ‘I’m not pregnant.’

‘I thought that’s why you’d been having all those headaches and feeling sick,’ she said.

‘What, since I was six years old?’ I groaned.

‘Oh yeah,’ she said, and I caught sight of the gum again. ‘It’s just that I’m sure I read somewhere on the internet that pregnant women feel sick sometimes.’

‘I’m not pregnant,’ I sighed.

‘So why all the headaches?’

‘You promise you won’t tell anyone?’

‘Cross my heart,’ Lucy said, and drew the sign of a cross over her chest.

I took a deep breath. ‘I
see
things.’

‘You see things?’ she asked, her brow creasing. ‘Like what?’

‘Dead people, I think,’ I whispered. ‘Or people who are dying. I’m not sure if I see them as they’re dying, or if they’re showing me how they died once they are dead, if that makes sense?’

‘You’ve lost me,’ Lucy said. ‘What, so you’re like physic or summin’?’

‘You mean psychic,’ I corrected her and smiled.

‘Whatever,’ she said, swishing the gum around again.

‘No, I’m not psychic,’ I said. ‘Or at least I don’t think I am.’

‘What then?’ she asked.

‘I see these pictures inside my head. Flashes of them. They, like, come really fast – hundreds, sometimes thousands of them all at once. Like snapshots, I guess. They never really make any sense.’

‘But you said you see people in them,’ Lucy said, her interest growing. ‘People who are dying?’

‘That’s right,’ I said, looking back at the school, anywhere except that agog look on her face; I already knew she didn’t believe me. Would I believe me, if I were her?

‘So, what, like murders, you mean?’

‘Sometimes,’ I told her, now feeling dumb.

‘Cool,’ she said, and I just caught the faintest of smirks on her lips.

‘It isn’t cool,’ I said. ‘It’s a pain in the arse.’

‘You could be, like, in your own movie or summin’,’ she said. ‘Like
Paranormal Activity
. You could set up a camera in your bedroom and we could see what happens in the night while you’re sleepin’.’

‘It’s nothing like that,’ I said, wishing that I’d kept my mouth shut. Why had I said anything? But I knew why. I needed to talk to someone about it and I’d hoped that because I’d known Lucy since junior school, she might have believed me.

‘You could make a fortune,’ she smiled. ‘Remember me when you’re rich and famous.’

‘I don’t want to be rich and famous,’ I said, gathering up my bag and standing up.

‘I was just messing about.’ Lucy smiled up at me. ‘Don’t go, Charley. Stay and tell me more about some of these dead people.’

‘No, it’s okay,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to get home.’

I had been right. I did get a stream of text messages and Facebook comments, not just from Lucy, but a whole bunch of other people. Lucy started it first, just the smallest of comments, on my Facebook page, but then it spread.

Tracy from Year 10 asked me if I could contact Heath Ledger
as she wanted me to tell him that she hoped he rested in peace and she thought he played a mean Joker! That comment got over three hundred ‘likes’.

Some guy I’d never even heard of left a comment on my page saying that his dad wanted me to ask Lady Di who was driving the white Fiat in the tunnel the night she died. Another wanted me to give their love to Michael Jackson.

Then the comments got nasty, more sick and cruel. Some called me a witch, a freak. Someone wanted to know if I could ask Mary Ann Nichols what Jack the Ripper looked like. And all the while, Lucy melted away into the background.

But there was one person who hadn’t melted away, and that had been Natalie. I hadn’t known her that well before the bullying started, but that changed when she found me crying as I waited for the bus home from college.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘Kinda,’ I said, sniffing back my tears.

‘You’re Charley Sheppard, aren’t you?’ she said, coming to stand next to me. She clutched an armful of text books to her chest.

I nodded, waiting for the taunts to start.

‘Okay,’ she said.

‘Okay, what?’ I said glancing at her through my tears, waiting for the punch line to come.

‘Okay so far,’ she said with a kind smile. ‘It’s just that I’ve heard all this weird stuff about this girl called Charley Sheppard and so far I haven’t been melted by the laser beams that come out of your eyes and the lightning bolts you shoot from your arse.’

‘Is that what people are saying about me?’ I gasped.

‘Yep,’ she said, with another smile. ‘And unless you have it stuffed up your sweater, I can’t see your broomstick either.’

‘They’re saying I have a broomstick now?’ I cried.

‘And that you’re followed around by dead people – I think someone said you talk to zombies or something,’ she added.

‘Are they being serious?’ I breathed. ‘They really believe that stuff ?’

‘They sure do,’ Natalie said. ‘And they say
you’re
the one with issues. That’s what’s so funny, don’t you think?’

‘I guess,’ I said with a frown.

‘So why look so sad?’ Natalie said. ‘The next time any of the others give you any kind of crap, shoot ’em down with your exploding farts or set your dead friends on them.’

I didn’t feel like laughing, but Natalie’s unusual view of the bullying I had been subjected to made me chuckle.

Then, giggling herself, she said, ‘What I don’t understand is, if you really are a witch like the others say you are, why are you standing around in the cold waiting for a bus when you could be home already by using your broomstick?’

‘Beats the shit out of me,’ I shrugged with a wide smile.

And that’s how Natalie and I became friends. She just believed me. She believed
in
me.

But if I ever wanted my father to have such faith in me, I would have to prove my flashes were real. I would have to try and locate the place I had seen and find the man who had killed the girl named Kerry.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed, deciding now was as good a time as any. I’d go in search of the tiny building I had seen on the hill and the narrow dirt road Kerry had been dragged along. As I pulled on a sweater and a pair of jeans, I wondered where I should start my search.

I remembered hearing the sound of trains. So, wrapping up warm in my coat, I crept out of the house and headed in the direction of the nearby railway tracks.

With my hands thrust into my coat pockets, I headed across Marsh Bay and towards the railway line that cut across the fields on the outskirts of town. It was cold, and the faintest glimmer of winter
sunlight was making the early morning sky look turquoise in the distance.

Reaching the edge of town, I followed the winding country roads in the direction of the track. I didn’t have an exact location to fix on. Everything I had seen in my flashes had just been a snapshot of information, but I could remember seeing a tumbledown building with a broken chimney pot on top. Could it be the same outhouse I had hidden in at Natalie’s funeral? No, that hadn’t had a chimney. It had barely had a roof and it hadn’t been on a hill. But there had been trains running close by. I had heard them.

It’s just a coincidence
, I heard my father breathe in my ear.
You’re putting two and two together and coming up with five. You only saw an old building in your flashes because of the outhouse you discovered at the edge of the graveyard. Charley, your mind is just trying to make sense of the traumatic experience you’ve been through
.

I pushed my father’s words from my mind. They were his doubts, not mine. I had to believe in myself.

Bent against the nagging wind, I pushed on, following the winding roads that snaked across the countryside. As the last of the stars winked out in the early morning sky, I stopped in the quiet country road to get my bearings. It was then I saw it. In the distance and on the crest of a small hill was a chimney pot sticking up from behind some trees. Could that be the rundown building I had seen in my flashes?

I couldn’t be sure without taking a closer look. It could have been any old farmhouse or outhouse, but my knees felt as if they had turned to rubber. I lurched forward, the ends of my long auburn hair whipping about in the cold wind. If it was the building I had seen, then my flashes were real and so were Kerry and her murderer.

Taking a deep lungful of freezing air, I headed along the road. I hadn’t gone very far when I came across a dirt road leading off towards the hill. I heard the sound of thunder and glanced up at
the sky. It was dank and overcast, but there were no signs of a storm. I realised it wasn’t thunder but the distant roar of a train. I closed my eyes, the sound of my heart now beating in my ears.

Had I found the dirt road where the man in my flashes had left his car? Was I standing near to where the girl named Kerry had been dragged, kicking and screaming through the undergrowth? Fighting the urge to drop to my knees, I swayed from left to right as if being blown by the wind. I was about to topple face first into the puddle-ridden track when I felt a hand grip my elbow and steady me.

‘Are you all right?’ I heard someone ask.

With a gasp, I opened my eyes. A guy dressed in a dark suit and tie had appeared from nowhere and was now holding me firmly by the arm.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked again, his light blue eyes fixed on mine.

‘Sure,’ I said, pulling my arm away. I took a step backwards, nearly losing my footing in the mud.

The young guy shot his hand out and took hold of my arm again. ‘Take it easy,’ he said. ‘What are you doing out here so early?’

‘Who are you?’ I asked, ignoring his question. How could I answer it without lying?

‘I’m a police officer,’ he said.

His eyes were the colour of the sky on a bright summer’s afternoon. His hair was black, and the lower half of his tired face had grown dark where whiskers had started to show through. He looked like he had been awake all night.

Suspecting I was in the very same place I believed a girl called Kerry had been murdered, and not knowing who this man was, I pulled my arm free from his grip again. The guy was way past just good-looking, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a killer.

‘How do I know you’re a cop?’ I asked, taking another step backwards in the mud.

With his eyes still searching mine, he fished what looked like a silver badge from his trouser pocket and showed it to me. There was a picture of him fixed next to the badge in the little black leather wallet. ‘I’m Police Constable Tom Henson,’ he said.

‘Am I in some kind of trouble?’ I asked him.

‘Not unless you’ve got something to confess,’ he half-smiled, placing his badge back in his pocket.

I couldn’t help but notice how his smile made his face kind of look mischievous, like he was trouble somehow. I liked that. Even so, I broke his stare and looked away.

‘So do you have something to confess?’ he asked softly.

‘No,’ I told him.

‘You never answered my question,’ he said.

‘And what question was that?’ I said, glancing sideways at him. ‘You’ve asked so many already.’

‘What are you doing all the way out here so early?’ Again, his eyes fixed on mine and even though his hair was skew-whiff and the stubble gave him the good looks of a rock star, I had to remind myself that he was a police officer.

‘Taking a walk,’ I said.

He glanced at his wristwatch. ‘What, at just before seven a.m.?’

‘I couldn’t sleep,’ I said, and it wasn’t a lie. ‘That isn’t against the law, is it?’

‘No,’ he said with that smile again. ‘It’s just that there was an incident out here last night.’

My heart started to beat faster again, and not just because he was hot. ‘What kind of incident?’ I asked as casually as I could.

He was watching me closely.

‘A young woman got struck by a train,’ he said.

It felt like I had been slapped and I couldn’t be sure if I physically flinched or not. It wasn’t the girl’s death that surprised me as much as the manner or it – exactly the same way as Natalie.

‘Do you know anything about that?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I said with a shake of my head, trying to recover from my shock. ‘Why would I know anything?’

‘It’s just that you look upset by what I told you,’ Tom said.

‘I’m cold,’ I lied.

‘So am I,’ he said, with that half-smile tugging at the corners of his lips again. ‘In fact, I’m cold, tired and very, very hungry. I’ve been awake all night and could do with some breakfast. What do you say?’

‘About what?’ I said.

‘Would you like to join me for breakfast?’ he asked, taking me by the arm and guiding me away from the entrance to the dirt track.

‘I haven’t got any money …’ I started, searching for an excuse. I didn’t want to be asked any more awkward questions.

‘I’m buying,’ he said, leading me towards a car parked around the bend in the lane and hidden from view.

I looked at the car. ‘Isn’t it meant to have lots of blue flashing lights?’ I asked as he opened the door for me.

‘I don’t drive around in a marked police car,’ he said.

‘How come?’ I asked.

‘I’m a detective.’ He smiled and swung the door closed.

So a detective was investigating the death of the girl I had seen in my flashes … Perhaps having breakfast with him wasn’t such a bad idea after all. He might mention something about the girl’s death I could link to what I’d seen.

CHAPTER 8

Tom – Monday: 07:34 Hrs.

I
stood in line and looked up at the breakfast menu. The girl stood beside me. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to take her other than McDonalds. I was new in town and didn’t know of any other cafes.

‘What do you fancy?’ I asked her.

She blushed and looked back at the menu. I was yet to ask her name, but she was really pretty. Fiery auburn hair hung over her shoulders and down her back, her skin was creamy-pale and she had sharp green eyes. I could only guess her age, but she didn’t look more than eighteen. That was okay. I could ask her questions about the death of the girl up at the tracks; I wasn’t planning on interviewing her, but should I need to, she wouldn’t need an appropriate adult present.