DEAD GOOD (5 page)

I start to laugh at him and he laughs back, his little tinkling giggle is infectious and as I walk around the kitchen holding the box of choco pops, I start to do a silly little dance to see exactly how far he’ll go with the fixation on his favourite box of cereal. Just as I’ve finished a slow spin and then a couple of kicks, I raise the box above my head and twirl balletically then I’m aware that the box is getting lighter and lighter in my hand. I turn my head slowly up towards the box which I’m holding high in the air, and my mouth totally drops open at the sight which meets me.

The box is actually no longer in my hand and is instead floating about two feet above my head and nearly touching the ceiling. I cannot stop staring at it. I hear Davey giggling and then he starts to clap with enjoyment of this act. I am simply gobsmacked; almost rigid with disbelief.

Then, very slowly I walk in a circle beneath the levitating box of choco pops - I pass my hands underneath it to see if there’re any strings or wire coming from anywhere. Who am I kidding? Of course there aren’t. Who’d have had the time to rig something like that? Not Davey that’s for sure. He’s thoroughly enjoying this circus performance, though. And right now I’m just beginning to get my breath back. So I try to be logical about what’s happening.

Okay, so nobody’s died and nobody seems to be getting hurt. This is not a nasty ghost, whoever it is. In fact it seems to like a bit of laugh and I’ve almost returned to a state of normality when all of a sudden the back door flings open and mum and dad come in and the box empties itself all over my head before falling to the floor with a crash.

Of course Davey’s delighted.

‘Having fun then?’ Dad crunches irritably over the cereal as he takes a shopping bag to the worktop.

My face is red hot. I am furious. But I probably look more guilty than angry. Typical. Just typical! Not only do we seem to have a ghost but we have one with a sense of humour. Brilliant.

‘Davey, go and fetch the dustpan and brush will you, under the sink?’ mum ruffles his hair like he’s completely innocent in all this. He drops off his chair and runs to the under-sink cupboard as she rounds on me. ‘Madeline, perhaps you’d like to explain why you just did that?’ and before I can even think of a reasonable reply, she carries on: ‘or perhaps I could answer that for you, eh?’

Oh god – yes please I think.

‘We already know how unhappy you are about being here, lovey,’ she starts off nicely. ‘But we don’t need you to make it ten times worse. Last night was bad enough…’ she actually makes this sound like the whole nightmarish episode was my fault! ‘We have enough to contend with your father being out of work and a family to support,’ she continues. ‘Is it really too much to ask that you simply try to get along and muck in with the rest of us and take each day at a time and try to work with us instead of against us? Hmm? Maddie? Do you understand what I’m saying?’

Wait. Is she – are they really saying they’ve decided to blame ME for all this lunacy?

My face is still red hot. How can I tell her that I didn’t do this? Or all that stuff last night? I can see that the evidence against me is currently overwhelming, but… well…. Davey was sitting on his chair at the table and I was standing in the middle of the room. There are choco pops in my hair and all over the floor of the kitchen. Okay, I’ll just have to be honest…

‘Well… okay,’ I try and control my breathing so my argument comes out properly. ‘Why? I mean why would I just tip a whole box of cereal over my head?’

The room is silent.

‘I mean… well, that’d make me just… just… stupid!’

The room is still silent. And no one is moving. I’m actually starting to think that we’ve all been frozen in time or something by this ghost with a sense of humour when Dad finally stands up with his broom and walks over to me. My heart races. Either he’s going to send me to my room or he’s going to take me in his arms and tell me everything’s going to be alright.

‘Why don’t you go and see Amber, eh?’ he smiles blankly.

Okay, I wasn’t expecting that, I have to admit. But yeah, that sounds like a good move to be honest. It’ll get me away from this shit-hole, mad house where nobody believes a word I say and I can tell her about these weird things that have happened here. And she’s always got an idea. And it’ll be nice to see her – a bit of sanity in this mad world. A bit of normality.

‘But I need to get rid of this….’ I start. However the look on his face tells me he’s not going to let me do anything other than walk out of the back door – and right now. He probably wishes I’d do it sooner rather than later. I can always borrow Amber’s brush when I get to her house.

I swallow.

‘Okay.’ I agree. Then grab my bag and leave.

seven

‘Seriously, Amb, there’s something really weird going on at that place. No bloody wonder it’s been empty for years – I think it’s haunted!’

I’m sitting in Amber’s beautiful bedroom. Like I’ve been doing ever since we met at primary school when we were four and a half. It’s a little piece of paradise here compared with the shittiness of the house I’ve just left. I still can’t believe I actually live there – that I’m actually expected to live there. Especially now. There’s probably a law against forcing children to live under haunted conditions. I bet there is. I am suddenly so cross with myself for not having remembered to find Gordon effing Brown’s e-mail address and try to make myself remember to do this when I get back ho… I mean to that place.

‘So tell me again what’s happened!’ Amber pleads, tugging at my hair with her brush. ‘Eeew – there’s some proper crap stuck in here, Maddie – what cereal did you say it was?’

‘Just choco pops… that’s all,’ I wince as she pulls my hair hard. ‘OWww!’

‘Sorry – that was a sticky bit. There. All better. See?’

Amber hands me her jewelled mirror and I twist my head one way and then the other to make sure there’re no bits left on my head. I seriously cannot believe what happened earlier. It’s no wonder Amber’s already asked me to repeat it twice. She probably thinks I’m a nutter. See? I knew this would happen. Didn’t I say once news got out that Davey had an invisible friend, then we’d all be labelled with the ‘Nutter’ tag? I did. The thing is, it looks like I’ve actually stuck the label on myself – with the help of the clever funny ghost of course. Not only has it made me look like a total psycho in front of my parents but now it might make me look even stupider in front of my best friend. I just hope Amber loves me and believes in me as much as she says she does. After all, we’ve made a friendship pact. So she should.

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘First Davey tells me I’m sitting on something called Mia…’

‘Some
one
you mean,’ Amber wriggles with glee. ‘Someone – God, this is so exciting!’

‘Okay then,’ I frown back. ‘Someone called Mia. And then the whole house just came to LIFE last night – especially the kitchen - and then Davey sees see some kind of figure walk through the wall of my bedr-’

‘Oooh, oooh and what about the figure on the landing?’ Amber interrupts, moving closer to me on the bed, her eyes wide. ‘Do you think it might have been one of the bodies you saw later on? Didn’t you say it felt like there was someone watching you?’

The way she says
someone watching you
is a little freaky. If she’s trying to scare me she needn’t bother. I was there, remember? I’m the one this stuff’s happening to. Or at least I’m in the place where it’s happening. She actually seems to be enjoying this. She bloody well wouldn’t if she had to live with it!

‘Or maybe she would.’ A voice in my head says.

Wait.
Was
that a voice in my head? My thoughts are getting really loud lately if it was.

‘Yeah - she’d love it!’ The voice says again.

I spin on the bed and Amber grins at me clutching my arm. ‘What?’ she says, twisting her head with me to see what I’m looking for. I swallow. I try to think. I try to think really, really loudly so that I can hear my own thoughts and compare them with the voice I thought I thought was in my head just now. Oh God I’m going mad. I’m starting to become schizophrenic. I’m going to go slowly insane. I’m hearing voices and…

‘Just then, when?’ Amber beams and bounces up and down on her bed. Whatever, whoever just said she’d love this; it would seem they were telling the truth. She does look like she’s enjoying it.

‘Did you hear an…um… voice?’ I say, hardly able to believe I’m actually asking her this. This is me here – Miss Sensible, Practical Capricornian who can scientifically explain the non-existence of God and … ghosts.. and…

‘Go on then!’ the voice says, teasingly. ‘Explain away, I’m listening!’

My head goes cold. The hairs on my arms and neck hurt with the pain of standing so much on end and I think I might faint. I move back towards the bed and sit down again. Amber bounces forward towards me.

‘Did you hear something?’ she says delightedly. ‘Who was it? What did they say? Is it a little girl? Is it Mia? Is she trapped between this world and the next? Is she trying to find her way into the light? Does she want us to help her find her way into heaven or has she forgotten something? Something she needs before she can move on? Maddie, talk to me – tell me what we need to do to save this poor little girl from living in limbo – I’ve heard it’s a horrible place to be trapped in!’

Jeez, where did she get all this crap from? She sounds like something out of a horror film – a bad horror film where the white haired weird old lady is holding hands with a load of others round a table and the candelabra’s floating in the air and ectoplasm is vomiting out of her mouth. Of course it’s all smoke and mirrors, I’ve seen them exposed.

‘Actually it’s not always,’ the voice laughs. ‘Although I have to agree that your friend here watches far too many bad films.’

The voice is strangely calming as I listen properly to it and now I’ve heard it a few times. And it’s not a little girl’s voice. It’s a boy’s voice. No - a man’s – maybe a young man’s…

‘Eighteen in November.’ he says matter-of-factly.

I nod my understanding but it’s very difficult, especially when you can’t see who it is you’re nodding at. To. It’s like hearing a voice in a fog.

‘Tell me, tell me, tell me!’ Amber is insistent. She’s clasped both my hands now like some crazed lunatic who needs a shot of something to calm her down.

The disembodied voice chuckles again in front of me and I’m very tempted to join him. Amber is getting scarily carried away with all this supernatural shit.

‘Uuu-ummm… Maddie said a swear word!’ he sings into my right ear. ‘Maddie said a swear word!’ My mouth forms a half- grin as I remember silencing poor Davey last night. A ghost is making me smile. Now this I didn’t expect.