Glimpse (12 page)

‘There are some rags in the airing cupboard upstairs. Get a couple, would you, there’s a love.’

Susie nodded and ran from the room, her heavy boots pounding up unseen stairs.

Before I could ask what she was playing at, Meg stooped forwards towards me in her chair. ‘Elizabeth.’ She spoke fast. ‘You need to stop what you’re starting at the inn, do you hear? There’s a powerful spirit, and you’ve caught its eye. Stop—’ she raised her white eyebrows ‘—for your own good.’

I felt the blood drain from my face. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ll put it bluntly. Stop talking to boys, Elizabeth,’ Meg hissed.

‘Are these all right?’ Susie reappeared in the doorway, a ratty tea towel in each hand.

I dropped my gaze to my wet shoes, not trusting my face to look calm. Susie crouched at my feet. She pressed one rag to the stained carpet and handed the other to me.

I dabbed at my jeans with a shaking hand, and stole glances at Meg over the top of Susie’s head. The old lady looked coldly back at me.

There were an awkward few moments as Susie and I finished cleaning up the mess Meg had made. Then we gathered our bags.

‘Thanks, Mrs Sanders,’ I said, as we stood up. ‘You’ve been so . . . helpful.’ I narrowed my eyes at her. ‘Maybe I could talk to you again?’

‘Oh, no.’ Meg said. ‘I don’t think so. I’ve told you all I can.’

Susie’s gaze flicked between me and Meg. Then she said, with unnatural brightness, ‘Shall we go, Liz?’

But I wasn’t finished here.

‘You can see yourselves out,’ said Meg.

We headed out of the living room and back into the dark hallway. I exhaled for what felt like the first time in minutes. Susie stepped outside and I went to follow her, but stopped and rolled my eyes in fake exasperation. ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘forgot my granddad’s book. Back in a sec.’

I darted back to the living room. I’d already had one cryptic warning today from Scott, I refused to go home with another. I had to make Meg explain what she meant about powerful spirits and not talking to boys.

I hurried round the doorway to the living room. ‘What did you mean—’

I didn’t reach the end of my question. Tingling. My skin felt like I’d plunged into a bucket of needles.

Meg still sat in her chair. But hovering in the air next to her was a disembodied head.

I gasped and staggered backwards.

The head whipped round to look at me. The malevolent blue eyes, the pink lips opening in a snarl – it was the same Glimpse I’d seen at the inn! But this time, brown ringlets framed the face, fine-boned shoulders sloped beneath the neck.

Meg glared. The Glimpse glared. I froze to the spot. Then Meg threw
Haunted Hulbourn
at me. The book bounced off my leg, jolting me to life.

‘Shoo, girl!’

I barrelled back down the hallway like I’d been shot from a cannon.

Susie squealed as I nearly flattened her into the weeds in the front garden. ‘Oh my God, what happened to you?’

‘Sorry, sorry!’ I pulled back, struggling to keep myself from hysteria.

Susie tugged on my sleeve and pulled me out of Meg’s front garden. We both ran and didn’t stop until we got halfway down the street, then we collapsed on the kerb. Susie laughed. I just tried not to be sick.

‘I heard her yelling at you,’ Susie giggled. ‘Oh my God, she’s crazy! Did you do something bad to her in a past life or something? She spilled tea on you!’

I looked at Susie, then groaned and hid my face in the cover of
Haunted Hulbourn
. ‘You saw that?’

‘It was so obvious.’ Susie bit her lip, her laughter subsiding. ‘Sorry, Liz, I didn’t know I was taking you to a crazy lady. Did you see she had bones on her bookshelves? I can’t wait to tell my mum.’ She shook her head.

I took a deep, gulping breath, and stood up off the kerb.

Susie stood up too, dusting off her long black skirt. ‘You know the way back, right? What now – shall I get my Ouija board, then back to yours for some ghost hunting?’

I couldn’t hide the look of horror on my face this time. Susie burst back into giggles. ‘Joking!’

I rolled my eyes, but managed a smile. ‘I’d better go. Thanks though, for organizing this. See you at school on Monday.’

‘No problem. You fancy another crazy evening sometime, you know where I live.’

I turned and started walking away before my grin became a grimace. I barely made it to the end of Susie’s street before I started to shake.

That Glimpse in Meg’s house – that ghost in Meg’s house – had been the exact same one I’d seen at the inn. And it – she – had been talking to Meg.

I didn’t trust that old lady any more than I’d trusted Derek. And even if I could trust her, Meg’s warnings made no sense. She’d said I should ‘stop what I was starting’, she’d said I had attracted the attention of a powerful spirit, she’d told me to stop talking to boys. By ‘boys’ she could only mean Zachary or Scott, but I didn’t see why she should care who I spoke to.

It didn’t matter. Meg was crazy. Meg hung out with ghosts – seemingly by choice. I might see spirits, but I’d never reach a point where I’d sit calmly while there was one in my house.

As for what Meg said about not talking to boys, I’d already decided I wasn’t going to talk to Scott if I could help it. Zachary, though . . . he, at least, had promised me straight answers. He was one boy I was definitely going to be speaking to again.

To my relief, Scott’s car wasn’t in the driveway when I got back to the inn. I ran to the front door anyway, just in case, my satchel banging against my side. I avoided looking at any of the upstairs windows – I couldn’t handle any more today.

‘How was your project research?’ Dad asked, wandering out of the kitchen as soon as I got through the door. ‘How was your friend?’ He smiled.

I paused in taking off my tea-sticky shoes. My face was probably sheet white, but I managed a real smile for him. ‘Susie? She’s okay.’

Dad waved his coffee mug at me. ‘One week into school, and you’ve got yourself a pal. I’m proud of you, Liz. I knew you could do it.’

I finished taking off my shoes and jacket as he went back into the kitchen. Dad’s words had penetrated the fraction of my brain that wasn’t absorbed with what had just happened at Meg’s house. Susie really was becoming a friend, I realized. Even after today, even after hearing all those ghost stories, Susie hadn’t freaked out. She actually seemed to like hanging out with me.

I wondered what she’d think if she knew I was like Meg. It was one thing hearing weird stories from an old lady, it would be another thing entirely if the girl you sat next to in lessons started talking that way.

I pulled myself up the stairs, desperate for my duvet. I wanted to do nothing more this evening but lie in bed and think – about my Glimpses, about ghosts, about Scott’s threat, about Meg’s, about the Glimpse from the inn appearing at Meg’s house, about meeting Zachary tomorrow.

Most of all, I needed to work out how I could – if I could – stop the Glimpses happening. I refused to end up like Meg, apparently crazy and alone, with no one but scary ghost-girls for company.

I got to the top of the stairs and padded down the corridor towards my room. Granddad’s bedroom door was ajar. I reached out to close it as I passed but paused as, through the gap, I saw yet another open door.

Instead of shutting the door, I pushed it open. At the foot of the bed was a built-in closet, its door wide open, revealing darkness inside; and leading into it – or out of it – were dusty trails, running across the carpet. I frowned. No ghost could have done this, and I couldn’t imagine Dad coming in here – there were photos of Mum everywhere. Even if he had been in, he wouldn’t have left it in such a mess. No. Crowley had been here. Or . . .

I remembered Scott’s bathroom trip this morning, the dusty marks on his clothes.

In two strides I was at the closet, groping in the darkness for the light-pull.

A bare bulb fizzed to life, illuminating the small space. A rail of black morning suits filled one wall. The only other objects in the closet were an empty shoe rack and, leaning against the wall, a stack of gold-framed paintings.

Checking behind me – no Glimpses, no Scott – I edged into the small room. The closet was uncarpeted, the floorboards grimy. Scuffles in the dust led me in as clearly as if Scott had chalked an arrow on the floor. The trail stopped at the stack of paintings.

Feeling more confused now than frightened, I crouched down by the paintings and started to look through them. Unless one of the ornate gold frames held a mirror, I couldn’t imagine Scott having any interest in them. I couldn’t really imagine anyone having an interest in them. Scene after boring rural scene – sheep, clouds, quaint Victorian milkmaids – languished under a blanket of dust.

I leaned the stack back against the wall. Maybe Scott hadn’t done this after all. It made no sense that he’d break into my granddad’s closet to rummage through old oil paintings.

Holding my grimy hands away from my clothes, I closed the door and followed the dust tracks back into the corridor. The scuffs in the carpet continued down the corridor, and, alarmingly, stopped right outside my room.

I ran to my bedroom and flung the door open. Unease twisted in my belly. In the middle of my bed lay a huge picture frame, face down.

I held my breath, listening hard. When I was sure I was still alone, I tiptoed towards the bed.

The gold frame was huge, bigger than any of the ones in Granddad’s closet. It sank into the duvet with its weight, smearing my white covers with grime. It took some effort to flip it.

I expected another farm view, more sheep, but this was no landscape. This painting was a scene of darkness. Luminous in the moonlight, a young woman stood at an open window, with full, half-parted lips and long dark hair twisted into a red-ribboned plait. A moonbeam struck a white bed behind her. A white bed in the middle of a white room.

Paranoia seized me and I ran to my wardrobe and yanked it open – no one there. I stuck my head under the bed – no one there. No one behind the door, which I slammed shut. I lifted the painting, my breathing quickening under its weight, and placed it shakily on the chest of drawers. For a long moment, I just stared at it. The white room, the girl at the window, her dark hair.

It couldn’t be coincidence that the room in the painting looked exactly like my bedroom, right down to the white beams and the white, low-framed door.

And the girl . . .

I stepped closer to the painting, scrutinizing every brushstroke. I tugged my own plait over my shoulder and fiddled with it as I looked at the painted girl’s braided hair. I examined her dress, long, simple and elegant; the dreamy look in her eyes as she looked out of the window; the thin layer of dust over everything.

Something tugged at the corner of my mind. I felt as if I’d seen this painting before. Maybe I had – it could have hung in the inn when I was a child, and I wouldn’t remember.

Or maybe . . . Out of nowhere, I remembered Alfred Noyes’ poem.

He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there

But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,

Bess, the landlord’s daughter,

Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

Bess. The dark hair, the red ribbon, the romantic eyes, the ghost, waiting at a window. I knew who the girl was. But that didn’t explain why Scott, or whoever, had left it in my room.

I turned back to the bed and my heart lurched. Framed by the rectangle of dust left by the painting, was a folded piece of paper.

Hardly breathing, I picked it up and unfolded it. It was a piece of A4 ruled paper – the same paper we used at school. Printed on it, dead centre, was a single word:

FAMILIAR?

What? It just had to be Scott, and I wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed or scared. Either he was purposefully trying to confuse me, or he was wrong in the head, or both. He’d been suspected of killing someone when he was just a child – surely you didn’t come away from an experience like that without it affecting your mind somehow. Whether he was innocent or not, he had to be a little bit screwed up.

Gravel crunched outside, jolting me back to reality. I went to the window. Scott’s little red car pulled up next to the outbuildings. I narrowed my eyes as Scott and Crowley climbed out. Their laughter drifted faintly up to me as they went into their office.

Gripping Scott’s note, I marched from my room and downstairs. I paused in the hallway. ‘Dad?’ I called. ‘Have you been in Granddad’s room today?’

‘No,’ he called back. ‘Why?’

‘No reason.’

I pulled open the front door and stepped outside. I’d had enough of this. I was going to confront Scott about the painting, and if Crowley was there too, so much the better. He needed to know how strangely his son was acting.

The outbuildings were a part of my new house that I hadn’t yet explored. They were single storey, reaching to only halfway up the inn, their rough stone contrasting with the adjoining whitewashed walls. The low building, once a stable block, had three doors and a couple of small, net-curtained windows. A pile of gardening tools was propped up against the wall.

I knocked on the door in the middle – the one Scott and Crowley always used – and waited.

Crowley answered. ‘Liz.’ He smiled, a beat too late. ‘Everything all right?’

I tried to see around his bulk to the room beyond. A TV flickered in a recess in the wall, a football game playing at low volume. ‘I need to talk to Scott.’

For a moment, I wondered if Crowley had heard me. Then he stepped back, gesturing for me to come in. ‘Sure. Scott, what have you done?’ Crowley’s tone was joking, but his eyes weren’t.

Good. This was serious, and I wanted Crowley on my side.

I stepped into the office, trying not to wrinkle my nose at the combined odour of damp, aftershave and sweat. I glanced quickly around. It wasn’t what I’d expected. The room was almost bare, the only furniture being a coffee table laden with a kettle and mugs, and a two-seater sofa on which Scott spread out. The walls were bare, the concrete floor covered with a simple red rug. Was this really where Scott and Crowley spent all their time?