Glimpse (20 page)

He glanced at me. ‘Yet, as you know, there was no happy ending. There was a reason highwaymen needed to keep moving. Up until then, I hadn’t attracted too much attention, but working the same roads, staying in the same inn for too long, was dangerous. Someone at the Lawyer took a dislike to me, or perhaps they wanted the reward money – I was worth two hundred guineas to swing – and the redcoats came.

‘You know how it ends. I’d rather not elaborate on that part.’

I did know how it ended: Bess shooting herself to warn him, Zachary dying the next day.

‘But it didn’t end,’ I said. ‘Because you and Bess were still around.’

He nodded. ‘It took a day and more for us to be reunited. After the redcoats shot me, I followed them to the crossroads, where they strung up my body. I was in shock at first. It took me a while to think of coming back to the inn. But when I did, I found her, in this room. Her room – now yours.

‘We had planned a lifetime together. And we got multiple. But we never had a life. We could not leave, we couldn’t grow old, we could not change.’

‘Wasn’t there another option?’ I asked. ‘If I understand it right, not everyone who dies remains here, a ghost. Couldn’t you have gone . . . wherever they go?’

He shrugged. ‘If it was an option, it was not open to me. There were no angels urging Bess to heaven, no devils to drag me to hell. No ethereal lights to walk into or doors to open. Only this—’ he spread his hands to indicate the room ‘—the same world we had always known.

‘I have considered it, of course. That this is a purgatory, and that Bess might have found her way to wherever it is that spirits are meant to go. But she would not have left without telling me. That I cannot believe. We’d been together for so long. It felt like half of me was ripped away when I discovered she was gone. It still does.’

Zachary rubbed his hands through his hair, with a humourless laugh. ‘That was intense. I never thought I’d tell anyone those stories again.’

My heart felt like it had grown too big for my chest. I wanted to wrap my arms around him and tell him everything would be okay; I wanted to run outside and not come home until I had found Bess for him; I wanted to go to Meg and tell her she was wrong about his brother, and that there was nothing she could say because I was never going to stop talking to Zachary.

I looked up and caught him watching me. He bumped me with his shoulder – the touch weaker than my brain told me it should be, but very real – and smiled. ‘It’s your turn to tell me something about you.’

I looked down at my hands. ‘Believe me, you don’t want to hear it.’

‘Believe me, I do.’

‘Another night,’ I said.

‘I’ll hold you to that.’

After Zachary left, I spent a contemplative hour on the end of my bed, looking out of the window at the moon.

It was hard to get his face out of my head. The way he’d looked when telling his story, so sad and elated by turns – his eyes sombre then sparkling, his thin lips downturned then stretched wide – tugged at my heart even now he was long gone in the night.

I had to help him find Bess. I couldn’t bear to think of the suffering he’d gone through and still was going through. He should be happy, always. The ‘always’ part was the whole point of the poem he was famous for. Something was wrong with the universe for allowing it be any other way.

Zachary was meant to be with his love. If that couldn’t be made right, if his suffering was pointless, what hope could there be for me – Liz, just some unimportant, messed-up girl – to have the life I was meant to? The life, I realized now, in a way that I hadn’t realized before, that I truly wanted.

I would find Bess. Because it was the way things had to be. Even if it meant Zachary never needed to speak to me again, even if his smiles and glances all went back to her. I would find her. For him.

It was ridiculous to feel sad over the prospect of no longer seeing Zachary, something I had wanted and wished for just days ago. I forced my thoughts back to the practical. I’d been to Bess’s grave, now I considered my other options.

There weren’t that many. I could trek the length of the country looking for Bess, but that could take a lifetime, especially since Zachary couldn’t come with me. The only obvious next step was Meg. I was sure she could find Bess if she wanted to. But she’d made it clear she didn’t want to help me.

For the first time, I wished I shared more of Meg’s abilities. She had ways of bringing ghosts to her, something to do with that bowl of bones. If I could only learn to do the same—

All of a sudden I remembered Susie the other day, on Meg’s street, joking about doing an Ouija board. She had said she’d wanted to be a paranormal investigator. Well, perhaps it was time to give it a try.

Scott glared at me all through registration the next morning. He was so obvious about it that the whole table stared at us, but I succeeded in ignoring him. I had bigger things to think about than him.

When the bell rang for first lesson, I took my time putting my book away and picking up my satchel, waiting for Scott to leave. But he didn’t. He sat right by my side until the classroom was almost empty. Only then did my calm shift to worry.

I stood up. Scott stood too, like my shadow.

I headed for the door. Scott followed close on my heels. I speed-walked through the corridors towards the Geography block, trying to shake him off. He couldn’t do anything to me here, I told myself, not in a school full of people.

My satchel strap tugged tight across my chest, yanked from behind. I gasped, stumbling. Before I could right myself, Scott opened a door and shoved me into an empty classroom.

He let go of me, and I stumbled towards the nearest table. I quickly recovered my balance and spun back towards the door. Scott was already blocking it, hands lifted.

I opened my mouth to shout for help.

‘Don’t!’ he said. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. I just need to talk. Two minutes.’

‘What are you doing?’ We were in an empty Maths classroom.

‘I’m giving you a final chance. That’s why we’re here.’

I looked back at him, my eyes wide. He was crazy. ‘A final chance for what?’

‘To stop what you’re doing at the inn.’

‘Stop what?’

‘You know what.’ He dropped his head and looked up at me through his blond lashes. ‘I’ve warned you before. You’re not the only one who can be awake at night, you know.’

I froze. Was Scott warning me about Zachary? That was all kinds of bad. I needed to know exactly what Scott knew. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

He took a step towards me, but not far enough to unblock the door. ‘Yes. I think you do. I’m not letting you get me in trouble again. So this is my final warning. Stop what you’re doing, or something bad will happen, and you’ll be to blame.’

That was it. I squared my jaw, walked forwards, stopped in front of him. I could see the door handle. I could grab it easily, if Scott didn’t stop me.

‘You think you can bully me, Scott,’ I said, my voice low to keep it from shaking, ‘but the more you threaten me, the easier it’ll be for me to persuade my dad to sack your dad. Especially now I know about Lucy. So leave – me – alone. I really mean it now.’

Scott started at Lucy’s name, as if I’d shocked him with a live wire. He looked angry, and hurt.

I reached past him for the door handle. He blocked my way. He grabbed my satchel strap and tried to wrestle it over my head.

‘Hey!’ I shrieked.

The strap broke with a snap. Scott stumbled back with the force of it, but he had my bag. He spun, holding it away from me.

I shouted then for real. ‘Get off my bag!’

I heard the door of the adjacent classroom burst open. Scott heard it too and threw my bag back at me.

A teacher’s face appeared in the glass of the door. She flung the door open. ‘What’s going on here? Scott Crowley, what is this?’

I turned round to the teacher, panting, hugging my bag to my chest, the broken strap dangling.

Scott looked between me and the teacher. ‘I wasn’t doing anything, miss.’

The teacher gave Scott an unimpressed look. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked me.

I hesitated, then nodded. I was only glad Scott had decided to take his aggression out on my bag instead of me. I shouldn’t have said those things to him, and especially not about Lucy. I didn’t know what I’d been thinking. I’d wanted to get him off my case, but instead I’d just tripped his switch.

He’d become aggressive so easily. I thought of the inn. Its many rooms, its isolation. He could do much worse there than just break my bag, and nobody would be there to stop him.

The teacher was clearly annoyed. She looked at me. ‘What’s your name? Who’s your form teacher?’

‘Elizabeth Rathamore. My form tutor is Mr Scholars.’

‘I’ll make sure he knows about this. Neither of you should be in here. Get to lessons.’

Scott was out of the door first. By the time I got into the corridor, he was already at the other end, as if he was the one who needed to get away from me.

I’d calmed down by the time I arrived at History, though the telling-off I’d endured from Miss Kirwin for being late to Geography hadn’t helped.

Susie took one look at my face as I sat down, and whispered, ‘Are you okay?’

I nodded, then changed my mind and shook my head. But before I could think how to explain, Miss Webb launched into a lecture about presentation structure.

Susie threw me wide-eyed glances for the next ten minutes. When Miss Webb stopped talking and allowed us to start pair work, Susie demanded, ‘What is it? You’re all pale.’

I didn’t know what to tell her. I couldn’t mention Scott’s warnings, without having to tell her about Zachary. But I had to say something or I’d explode.

‘It’s just Scott,’ I said. ‘He’s being weird.’

Her face grew properly concerned. ‘There’s no such thing as “just” Scott. What’s he done?’

I struggled for words. ‘He followed me after registration and, well, we got into a tussle. He broke my bag.’ I held up my satchel, with the knot I’d made in the strap to hold it together.

‘What did he do that for?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Was he trying to steal it?’

I shook my head.

Susie lowered her voice. ‘You remember what I told you about Lucy? I don’t like it if he’s getting violent.’

I lowered my voice to match hers. ‘Of course. But it’s okay. I’m going to be really careful around him.’ That much was true.

Susie nodded, but the worry stayed in her eyes.

‘Girls,’ Miss Webb barked behind us, ‘this doesn’t look like presentation work to me. Look, you haven’t even written anything down yet.’ She reached between us and flicked my blank notepad. ‘Chop chop.’

Susie and I bent studiously over our work. As soon as Miss Webb moved away, Susie slumped back in her seat. ‘Be careful, Liz, okay?’

‘I am. I will.’ I smiled, and clicked the top of my pen, wishing I could snap Scott out of my mind just as easily. I had bigger goals today than avoiding him. ‘So, about this presentation,’ I said. ‘I was wondering if you’re up for a teensy bit more research?’

Susie needed no persuasion to agree to doing an Ouija board. It was all she talked about, all break-time.

‘I don’t get why we can’t do it at yours though,’ she said. ‘It’s so much bigger. Your dad wouldn’t have a clue what we we’re doing if we did it at yours. My mum’ll ask all kinds of questions.’

That was my only condition for doing an Ouija board – that we do it at Susie’s house. She was quite right, it made more sense to do it at the inn, but I couldn’t risk it. Not with Ann around. And Zachary of course. I wasn’t sure how Ouija boards worked – I’d only read about them, and seen the odd movie sequence – but the possibility of summoning Zachary through one made me shudder, in a completely different way to the idea of summoning Ann. I wanted to keep him separate, somehow, from my other Glimpses.

‘Do you think the inn’s ghosts will even hear us at my house?’ Susie pushed.

‘Isn’t that the point of Ouija boards, that they can summon ghosts from anywhere?’ I said. ‘And anyway, my dad’s kind of religious,’ I lied. ‘He’d kill me if we did it at mine and he found out.’

Susie just shrugged and said, ‘All right then. We’ll just have to say the names of the inn’s ghosts when we’re doing it, I suppose.’ Then the certainty left her face and she whispered, ‘Do you think we should ask for Lucy’s ghost too?’

Shivers spidered up my spine. Susie was right: if anyone could tell me how worried I had to be about Scott, it was her.

Bess, my mum, Philip and Lucy. Was it stupid to hope that, out of all the spirits in the world, they would be the only ones that came through?

After the bus journey home, Susie, Matt and I took the long route back to Susie’s street. Matt fished a bag of chocolates out of his backpack and passed them around as we walked.

I took a small handful, grateful for the distraction – my nerves were jittering like Mexican jumping beans – before I saw what was in my hand. ‘Chocolate ghosts?’

‘Bought them at lunch,’ Matt said. ‘All the shops are getting stuff in for Halloween. Thought they were appropriate, considering you two are turning into the Noyes College ghostbusters.’ He smiled, and bit the head off a spook. ‘Suze, you’ve totally corrupted our new girl.’

‘I haven’t corrupted her.’ Susie slapped his chunky arm. ‘She asked me.’

‘You’re two freaks together, then.’ Matt leaned down – a long way; he was so much taller than Susie – to kiss her temple. ‘Rather you than me, Liz.’

‘Wuss,’ Susie muttered.

They play-fought, snatching kisses in-between fake punches. I looked away, as I always did when they got smoochy, before my face could start burning. No boy had ever looked at me the way Matt looked at Susie. Which had never seemed a big deal before; I’d never met a boy I wanted to look at me the way Matt looked at Susie.

But now, I couldn’t help imagining Zachary in Matt’s place, me in Susie’s. I imagined Zachary smiling at me, his attention all on me. It was almost too painful. Even if it wasn’t for Bess, even if Zachary liked me, we could never be like this. He was dead.