Glimpse (10 page)

‘You sounded distressed.’ His words were crisp as dry leaves in the cold air. ‘I wanted to see if everything was well.’

I knew I should scream. I knew I should yell for Dad.

I did neither.

Instead, I leaned further out of the window and looked around for Scott. I didn’t see him, only darkness. I looked back at the boy. He smiled kindly. I gave him my sternest look in return. I wanted answers.

‘You were about to break in. That’s why you’ve been sneaking around.’ I had an even worse thought. ‘Were you going to jump in my room?’

‘I wouldn’t be so disrespectful.’

‘Where’s Scott? I know he’s here somewhere. I know you’re in this together.’ I scanned the ground again.

The boy’s pale gold eyebrows drew together. ‘The caretaker’s son?’

‘Don’t pretend you don’t know. I’m too tired for games. Tell me what you’re doing here – a real answer this time – and then I want you gone. For good.’

‘I told you last night.’ His voice was calm, steady. ‘I want to talk to you. We can help one another.’

I drew my dressing gown further around me and looked at the boy with suspicion. So far, trespassing aside, he wasn’t talking or acting like one of Scott’s gang. But I’d seen how well Scott could lie. And I certainly couldn’t trust this boy.

‘What could you possibly help me with?’

‘You need answers. And I have questions.’

‘What kind of answers?’

He narrowed his vivid eyes, considering. ‘You were here as a child. But you’re different now. You’re troubled, and I believe I know why. There are things in your life you don’t understand. I can explain them.’

He may as well have hit me with a taser. He knew me from before, he knew about my past!

While I knew it was probably a trick, I was too curious – too excited – to let it go. I wanted this to be true. If he’d known me as a child, he’d known Mum too. I had to find out more.

‘Um, okay,’ I blustered. ‘Let’s talk. But you have to get out of that tree.’

He grinned with relief. It completely transformed his face, the way moonlight transforms the night sky when it breaks through the clouds. ‘Not a problem,’ he said.

The branch that pointed from the tree to my window began to shake as the boy reached his full height, and I realized what he was doing.

‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘No, no, no, I didn’t mean . . .’

I gaped up at him as he inched towards me. Closer and closer. He held his gloved hands out to each side, grasping smaller branches in his fists to keep from falling.

‘You might want to move out of the way,’ he said.

‘You’re insane!’

The boy crouched, perfect and controlled as a cat about to leap. I’d barely moved out of the way when there was a whoosh of air and a thud on the floorboards in front of me. The shock of his arrival trembled up through the soles of my feet.

‘Are you crazy? You could have killed yourself!’

‘No.’ He smiled. ‘I could not.’

I stared up at him. He seemed so much taller than he’d looked in the tree. Up close, his skin was less pale, his cheeks pink from the cold. There was a silvery scar, about an inch long, on his jaw. He smelled of night air and damp leaves, more tree than boy.

This, my brain whispered, is very bad. And incredibly surreal. A few minutes ago, I’d been sleeping, and now there was a tall, strong-looking boy in my room in the middle of the night; a boy who made jumping through windows look natural.

A boy who – if he’d lied, if his intentions were bad – could hurt me now more easily than he’d climbed that tree.

I took a slow step backwards. ‘You didn’t have to do that. We could have talked through the window.’

‘This is more private.’

‘Private’ was the problem. But it was too late now. ‘Let’s make this quick,’ I said. ‘Tell me what you came to tell me.’

‘We can make this quick.’ He held a gloved hand out to me, like a gentleman meeting a lady in a classic novel. ‘Zachary Wilson. It’s a pleasure to meet you.’

I kept my hands behind my back. There was no way I was touching him. ‘You promised me explanations. You said you knew me from before.’

‘I didn’t know you exactly.’ His eyes scanned my face. ‘But I have seen you at the inn before. Years ago. Your abilities were different then. That’s what I want to discuss with you.’

Goosebumps rose on my arms. ‘My abilities . . . ?’

‘You see things that other people do not.’

I blinked at him. My whole body went ice cold, like I’d been plunged into a freezer. Scott must have told him. There was no other way this boy – Zachary – could know.

‘What do you want from me?’ I backed away from him, banging up against the wall. He had me trapped – wall to one side, my bed to the other. ‘What are you and Scott getting out of this?’ I glanced at the door. Before he could answer, I scrambled up onto the bed away from him.

‘Wait. I have no intention of harming you.’

I jumped off the bed, onto the floorboards, spun round to face him. He stepped around the end of the bed towards me, his footsteps heavy.

‘Stop where you are or I’ll scream!’

He froze, one foot in the air. He lowered it slowly. ‘For the final time,’ he said, his eyes intense as though he could force me to believe him, ‘I have no connection with the caretaker’s boy. I’m here because of you. I know that you see things, because I’ve seen you see things. It’s evident that you don’t know what they are. And I can explain them.’

There was no way. He was crazy. I looked around the room for a weapon. My bedside lamp would have to do. I inched towards it and clasped my hand round the heavy brass stem. I felt safer.

I fixed my eyes on him, unblinking. Perhaps it was the lamplight making the room look smaller, but he seemed to take up too much space; Zachary filled the room with his presence, tall and solid as a standing stone.

While I scanned him, he scanned the room, the white walls and dark-shadowed corners. His attention caught on the pile of Granddad’s books on the dresser. He leaned towards them, reading their titles.

‘Don’t touch anything,’ I said.

He turned to look at me, his eyes glittering. ‘This.’ He lifted a gloved finger and pointed at the cover of
Haunted Hulbourn
. ‘This is what I came to talk to you about.’

My skin prickled. ‘An old book?’

He straightened, his smile back. ‘No. I want to talk about the spirits you see.’

I opened my mouth to laugh, to protest. Nothing came out, my throat was thick with panic. My mind raced. He wasn’t meant to say what he just had. No one, ever, was meant to say what he just had.

‘You
are
one of Scott’s friends,’ I whispered. ‘And you’re messing with me.’

His face grew solemn, like it was carved out of stone. ‘I wish, for both our sakes, that was the case.’

My skin crawled, goosebumps dancing across my scalp. Then the tingling scurried up my arms like a mouse, and I gasped.

Zachary jolted to attention. He stared at my bedroom door, alert as a panther stalking a gazelle. I looked behind me, panic making my breathing loud. But there was nothing at my door.

‘Hear that?’ he asked, his voice barely louder than the breeze outside my window.

I listened. Nothing. Then,
tap, tap, tap
. Soft, heeled footsteps in the corridor outside my room.

Pins and needles consumed my skin. There was a Glimpse outside my room. Zachary and I locked eyes for an instant. He crept silently towards me, shifting his gaze to the door. Oh my God. He could sense it too.

He was close enough for me to make out every tangle in his hair, every jagged edge around his scar. A moment ago, I’d have run. Now, I didn’t want to.

He stopped, his head turned towards the door. ‘You hear her, don’t you?’ he breathed next to my ear. ‘You sense her.’

I gave the tiniest of nods.

‘Spirit.’

Fresh fear prickled over my skin, as if he was saying the word for the first time.

‘I regret she’s here,’ he whispered, ‘because now I have to depart. But we need to speak about this again.’ He drew back, his green eyes questioning.

I nodded my answer.

‘When?’ His thin lips barely moved.

‘Saturday,’ I whispered.

He nodded. ‘The other side of the woods. Early evening.’

I nodded again, more firmly than before. God, I was terrified. But I’d also never been more excited in my life. He saw the same things I did. He was like me.

He smiled at me, not his wide grin from before, but something more solemn, more heartfelt. Then he looked again at the door. ‘I have to go.’ He took a step back. ‘Don’t be alarmed. She cannot harm you.’ He paused. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Elizabeth,’ I whispered.

‘Then I look forward to seeing you again, Elizabeth.’

In one fleet movement, he was at the other side of the room, crouching on my windowsill. He lifted a gloved hand in farewell then leapt off gracefully, silently, into the darkness. I didn’t worry about him. I didn’t have time. The tree outside rustled and creaked, then fell quiet.

I turned back to the door. My hand on the lamp sent shadows spidering out around the room.

Tap, tap, tap
, from outside my door. Then
tap, tap, tap
, again, from further away down the corridor. As the footsteps faded away, the pins and needles faded too. I was left alone with a racing heart and the all-consuming stillness of night.

I opened my eyes with a gasp. My room was unmenacing in the morning light.

I sank back against the pillows, my hands over my face. The events of the night raced through my mind, more surreal and intense than any nightmare.

That boy, Zachary, jumping from the tree into my room. The Glimpse outside my door. A Glimpse he had sensed too.

If Zachary was right, that thing outside my room last night – all the countless fragments I’d glimpsed in the last seven years – had been spirits; had been dead things.

Black dread filled me, cloying as ash. But, underneath it, glowed an ember of hope. I got out of bed and looked at the list stuck to my wardrobe door. ‘No more Glimpses’. I was no closer to getting rid of them, but for the first time, someone had provided an explanation that corroborated their existence. For the first time, I wasn’t in this alone. My Glimpses were outside of me, not all in my head.

I was closer to understanding this than ever before.

Zachary said my Glimpses were spirits, but he hadn’t told me how he knew that. In the cold light of day, I realized I had far more questions than he had answered. For a start, who the hell was this guy? Why did he have to leave so urgently when he heard the steps outside the door? And – the biggest question of all – if he wasn’t Scott’s friend, how did he know all about me?

I pulled open my wardrobe door. Operating on autopilot, I took out a new pair of jeans, and scanned the hangers of boring new tops. I didn’t have the mental energy to remember which T-shirt was meant to go with which cardigan, which cardigan with which jewellery, and this morning I didn’t care. I reached for one of my vintage items instead – a purple velvet tunic with a white lace collar. It wasn’t standard teenage issue, but after the revelations of last night, it seemed ridiculous to spend time matching clothes.

The scent of coffee mingled with the inn’s usual mustiness as I plodded downstairs with my school bag. Dad was up already. Yawning, I headed into the kitchen.

I jolted to a halt in the doorway. ‘Scott.’

‘Delighted to see you too.’ Scott looked me up and down from his perch at the kitchen table. One leg was curled casually under him as if it was perfectly normal for him to be there. His white teeth sparkled into a smirk as he took a sip of coffee.

I narrowed my eyes at him. ‘Why are you here?’

‘I left something in the office last night.’ He nodded at a Maths textbook on the table next to his mug. ‘Thought I’d give you a lift to school, since I’m here. Show you my new wheels.’ He smiled again.

I looked from Scott to Dad. Dad stood at the kitchen counter, buttering toast. He gave me a look that warned me to be polite.

I really didn’t know what to make of Scott. After last night, I was fairly sure that he had been telling me the truth about not knowing Zachary, but that still didn’t explain why he had been spying on us, or why he’d lied about it. And the news that he had been linked to the death of a girl was not going to shake off that easily.

I took a seat at the opposite end of the table to him. ‘Thanks, but I’m okay getting the bus.’

‘Liz,’ said Dad, thrusting a plate of toast at me. ‘Scott has very kindly waited for you.’

I groaned, and reached for the plate. ‘Okay.’ I managed a smile. ‘A lift would be nice. But just this one time.’

Scott nodded, but a flicker of something crossed his face – uncertainty? Disappointment? He looked down at his mug and tugged at the fake-diamond stud in his ear lobe.

I bit into the toast, my crunching loud in the suddenly awkward silence.

‘Want a slice?’ I nudged the plate towards Scott as a peace offering. I had no reason to apologize to him, but it wouldn’t do to aggravate him. And I didn’t want Dad upset either.

‘I already ate breakfast,’ Scott said.

I chewed slowly, watching him watching me out of the corner of his eye. In between sips of coffee, his fingers constantly moved, pulling at his hair or his eyebrow ring, teasing a splinter in the table. He was nervous about something, I realized.

After a few minutes, he leapt up from the table. ‘Mind if I use your bathroom?’

‘Go ahead,’ Dad said.

‘Liz, I’ll see you in the car in five.’ Scott brushed past me, in a cloud of aftershave. I pulled a face – the tang did not go well with toast.

The moment he left the kitchen, I sat back in my chair and rubbed my fingers across my forehead.

Dad sat in the seat Scott had vacated. ‘You look pale.’

‘I didn’t sleep well.’

Dad grabbed one of my uneaten pieces of toast. ‘I thought I heard noises in the night. Bad dreams?’

I glanced at him. Made my voice breezy. ‘Yeah. Not too bad though.’

Scott’s footsteps creaked and banged through the ceiling. It sounded more like he was shifting furniture around than using the bathroom. A minute or so later, he pounded back down the stairs.