Glimpse (21 page)

I swallowed my chocolate ghost and made a show of eyeing Matt’s all-black outfit, his studded dog collar, his wrists full of rubber bracelets and his dyed-black hair. ‘You’re scared of ghosts? I thought you’d do Ouija boards over breakfast.’

‘I’m not scared,’ he said. ‘I’m sensible. You know it’s only evil spirits that come through those things. My brother’s friend got possessed when he did one. It made him kill his hamster.’ Matt grinned, and pulled another ghost from his bag of sweets. He waved it in Susie’s face with a ‘Woo-ooo!’

Susie shrieked and grabbed my hand, and we ran, giggling to the end of the road. Matt laughed and chased us, trying to flick sweets into our hair.

Running was easy. Giggling was too, though it felt more like hysteria than laughter. There was enough jittery energy running through my system to power the whole of Hulbourn.

I had a full minute to contemplate Susie’s house before we went inside, thanks to the prolonged kiss goodbye that Matt-and-Susie were enjoying. Susie’s house was the same size and layout as Meg’s, but I could already tell it would be very different inside. And about as different again as the Highwayman.

Cheerful, red cotton curtains hung in the windows, framing a windowsill full of money plants and a huge, dozing ginger cat. Glass wind chimes hung from the curtain pole, reflecting colourful shards of light back into the front garden. When Susie finally unlatched her lips from Matt’s and opened the front door for me, the whole house smelled deliciously of baking.

‘Mum brings her work home with her,’ Susie said, leading me into the small front hallway. ‘She’s always trying out new recipes to make at school.’

The family cat emerged from the living room with a heart-melting meow. Susie scooped him up and carried him into the kitchen ahead of me.

‘Hi, Mum,’ she called.

‘Hi. Hey, Liz.’ Susie’s mum smiled at me from the counter, where she was doing something with Rice Krispies, chocolate and a bag of dried fruit. She’d swapped her dinner lady tabard for a long, floaty black dress, like a grown-up version of something Susie would wear.

‘Hi, Ms Boyd,’ I said. I felt suddenly shy. I’d seen Susie’s mum plenty of times in the school dining hall, but this was different. I’d never been invited to a friend’s house in my memory, and I wasn’t entirely sure what I was meant to do.

‘Whatever you’re baking,’ I said, ‘it smells amazing.’

‘Thank you. It’s banana loaf.’ Susie’s mum smiled.

‘Mum’s obsessed with making cakes that contribute to your “five a day”,’ Susie told me. ‘She made chocolate and beetroot cake last week. It was so gross.’

‘It wasn’t that bad,’ her mum said. ‘It’s all part of the job. School dinners are more complicated than they sound, you know. I’m just doing my bit. You liked the green tea cupcakes I made earlier in the week, didn’t you?’

Susie rolled her eyes, and turned to me, the cat in her arms. ‘Here, hold Marmalade for me. I’ll get us something to drink. I can make an ace replica of the Cocoa Pod’s hot chocolate.’

‘Sounds yum,’ I said.

Susie rolled the cat into my arms. I didn’t have much experience with animals, I’d never had pets, but Marmalade didn’t seem to care. He lay in my arms, well fed and purring, squinting up at me.

I rocked him – just like a baby – glad to have something to do as Susie and her mum weaved around each other in the small space.

‘Don’t use all my sprinkles.’

‘Mum, we’ve got two packets. Where are the cinnamon sticks?’

‘Cupboard on the left. Make me one too, would you?’

‘I’ll swap you for a couple of those crispy cakes. Unless there’s something weird in them.’

‘Only raisins.’ Susie’s mum looked back at me. ‘Are you all right with Marmalade, Liz? He’s a bit of a porker. Put him down if he gets heavy.’

‘He’s fine. Thanks.’

I lifted the cat up, and rubbed my nose in his fur as Susie and her mum continued bustling, their banter and laughter flying back and forth. I knew from school how well Susie and her mum got on, but seeing them like this, now, made it impossible to ignore. I felt like I was intruding on something private. But what was more painful was the thought that they were like this every day.

I loved Dad, but we didn’t have what Susie and her mum had. Maybe that would change now he was getting better, but he’d never be my mum.

I’d heard the way adults talked about me behind my back, especially when I was younger.
Poor girl, growing up without her mother.
It hadn’t meant much to me – my only experience of what mothers were meant to be like came from TV – but seeing Susie and her mum now really rammed it home.

Was this what Mum and I would have been like, if she’d lived? I’d never know. Either way, my life would have been completely different.

Marmalade was interested in my heart locket, which dangled around his whiskers. He lifted a paw to bat at it, squirming in my arms. It was like trying to hold treacle. I let him ooze down towards the lino, feet first. When he found the ground, he meowed and went to sit by his food bowl.

‘You’re fat enough,’ Susie told him. She turned and handed me a steaming mug of chocolate. She picked up a second mug and a plate of crispy cakes, which her mum had decorated with fresh fruit.

‘We’ve got History project stuff to do,’ Susie told her mum. Behind her mum’s back, she grinned at me, her eyes round and sparkling. ‘Ready, Liz?’

I nodded, though I was pretty sure my smile was part-grimace. I’d almost forgotten about the Ouija board.

‘Thanks for the cakes, Ms Boyd,’ I remembered to say, as we left the kitchen.

Susie danced up the stairs to her room. I followed. I was half tempted to go back and get the cat – he wouldn’t protect me against Glimpses, but his presence would be a comfort.

‘Wow,’ I said, as Susie opened the door to her room. ‘It’s like a monster and a fairy mashed their bedrooms together.’

‘Exactly the look I was going for.’ Susie smiled, and pointed at her bed, which was covered on three sides by a black mesh princess canopy. ‘Sit.’

I sat, balancing my hot chocolate on my knee, and gazed around me. Her walls were covered with heavy-metal band posters. Girly, black lace cushions littered the floor. A vase of fake, black roses sat on the windowsill – I didn’t need to ask to guess they were from Matt. Every other surface was covered with objects – black candles, stuffed bears with vampire teeth, dirty plates, open pots of make-up.

I couldn’t help thinking of my own bare, white room, its only decoration the painting of Bess, and my Normality List. I wondered what Susie would think of me if she knew.

Susie knelt on the floor, fishing for something under the bed. She pulled a box out and wiped off the lid. ‘Here it is,’ she said, sitting cross-legged on the carpet.

I exhaled the tightness from my lungs, and crouched down on the floor next to her.

‘Perhaps we should be drinking bat’s blood, instead of hot chocolate,’ I joked. ‘Can spirits come through when there are marshmallows in the room?’

Susie laughed. ‘Haven’t you ever seen
Ghostbusters
? Marshmallow man? Just let me read the instructions.’ She pulled a slip of paper from the box and squinted at it.

‘You’ve done this before, though . . .?’

‘No. Never.’ She shrugged. ‘Mum only let me buy a board when I turned sixteen, but I never found a willing partner-in-paranormal-crime to do it with me. Until now.’ She looked up at me through her red fringe, and grinned.

I gripped the handle of my mug so hard, my knuckles burned against the ceramic. ‘Some ghost-hunting expert you are.’

‘Wannabe ghost-hunting expert. Okay—’ she flapped the instruction sheet ‘—it sounds pretty straightforward. Can you light those candles on the bookcase? There’s a box of matches next to the big candle.’

I did as she asked.

‘Oh . . . no, actually,’ she said. ‘Blow them out again. The candles are meant to be white – black candles call bad spirits.’

I blew them out with such force that I spat at her tea lights. ‘Here. Let me read those,’ I said, almost snatching the instructions off her.

Susie lay the board on the carpet between us as I skimmed the printed sheet. She was right, the instructions were straightforward, but the list of printed warnings made me sweat.

‘Let’s get this over with,’ I said. I opened her curtains wide to let in as much daylight as possible, turned on the main light, and sat down at the board. I rested my fingertips on the wooden indicator.

Susie placed her hands on the board next to mine with a squeak of nervous excitement. ‘Do you want to ask the questions, or shall I?’

‘I will,’ I said. It took me a minute to calm my mind, but eventually I was ready. ‘Is there anybody there?’ I asked.

This could either be the most enlightening experience of my life, or one of the most foolish things I’d ever done.

Susie and I stared at each other. Her smile wobbled nervously, her eyes slightly vacant, as, like me, she put all her focus into her fingertips.

Nothing happened. I asked again. ‘Are there any spirits in the room?’

This time, there was a jolt beneath my fingers. Susie gasped, ‘Oh my God, oh my God,’ as the indicator slid towards ‘Yes’. ‘Are you pushing it?’ she asked.

I shook my head. I didn’t need to ask Susie the same thing. My whole body vibrated. There was a Glimpse here, and it was close.

I hadn’t expected this to happen so fast.

Unable to stop myself, I twisted round, looking for it. I didn’t find a thing out of the ordinary.

Susie was focused intently on the board. I heard her breath quicken. ‘How many spirits are in the room?’ she asked.

The indicator slid to the number one. Heat prickled across my skin.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

The indicator slid across the board, skating the alphabet slowly, as though teasing me. But it passed B for Bess; J for Juliette, my mother; L for Lucy and P for Philip, and came to rest simply on ‘No’.

No?
What kind of an answer was that?

Goosebumps joined the prickling on my skin. Too late, I realized with a gasp that I’d forgotten to start the Ouija by refusing the bad spirits – the instructions had been explicit on this.

‘No bad spirits here,’ I said, my voice too loud. ‘If you’re a bad spirit, you can leave.’

‘Ask about the inn,’ Susie hissed.

My throat was tight. ‘We’re looking for some spirits,’ I said to the room. ‘We’re looking for Bess Richards. Do you know her?’

The indicator jolted under our fingers and slid back to the alphabet. Fast, jerky movements spelled out ‘G-o-o-d’ then ‘r-i-d-d-a-n-c-e’.

‘Good riddance?’ Susie frowned.

My fingertips began to tremble on the indicator. Whoever this spirit was, they knew that Bess had disappeared. ‘Where is she? Do you know where she’s gone?’

Susie’s frown deepened. I knew that I was risking a lot, straying from the History project in this way, but right now I didn’t care. I held my breath as the indicator hurried back across the alphabet.

‘S-t-o-p l-o-o-k-i-n-g’.

I swallowed, hard. ‘Why should I stop?’

The indicator slid to Z. And dread balled in my stomach.

‘Z-m-i-n-e’, spelled out in slow letters.

‘Z mine?’ Susie repeated.

I met her gaze, eyes wide, my lungs pumping, skin burning raw. ‘Ann?’ I whispered.

The indicator rushed to the Z and starting making its way back towards A.

‘Shit—’ Susie’s voice was small ‘—this means the spirit’s trying to get out of the board, right? Take it to Goodbye—’

But I’d already let go of the indicator. I crawled on my hands and knees, searching the room for Ann, as her tinkling laugh filled the room.

‘Oh, Elizabeth, you are hilarious!’ Ann’s voice.

In the corner of the room, Ann’s laughing head and shoulders appeared against the wallpaper, followed by the rest of her – all of her. She didn’t look solid like Zachary, but she was the closest thing to human I’d ever seen another Glimpse become.

Terrified, I leapt to my feet. ‘Go away!’ I wished my words were solid so I could throw them at her. ‘You’re not meant to be here.’

‘Oh, but I thought you wanted to talk.’ Ann’s gaze darted to the Ouija board. ‘It would have been rude to ignore you.’ She smiled, rosebud lips stretching over her creepily small teeth.

I spun and grabbed the nearest thing that came to hand – one of the black candles – and ran forwards. Susie dived out of the way as I charged right over the Ouija board. I barely registered it crack in two beneath my feet.

‘Liz! What . . . ? Liz!’ Susie gasped.

I threw the candle at Ann; it sailed right through her small-boned chest and thunked against the wall behind her. ‘Go away!’

I heard Susie shriek.

‘Leave me alone,’ I said, ‘I’m nothing to do with you!’

Ann’s fake-sweet smile vanished. ‘Now, that wasn’t very nice.’ She took a step towards me. ‘This is your final chance, Elizabeth.’ She took another step, her brown dress moving stiffly around her ankles. ‘Keep speaking with Zachary, keep searching for that girlfriend of his, and this—’ she gestured up and down my body ‘—will be over.’

It took all my self-control to remain still. ‘You can’t hurt me,’ I hissed. ‘I’m not scared of you.’

Ann flashed me a brutal smile. Then she jerked her arm up to hit me, her hand flying towards my face. I flinched away, my eyes closed against the anticipated slap. It didn’t hurt – it felt like a feathery tickle – but the violence of it made it seem like it should. When I opened my eyes, Ann was gone.

I gasped, as if I’d just been rescued from drowning, and staggered back.

‘Oh my God, Liz.’ Susie’s voice shook from somewhere below me.

I looked down at her. Susie was jammed against the side of the bed, her face paler than I’d ever seen, her eyes huge. Splinters of the Ouija board, doused in spilled hot chocolate, covered the carpet at her feet.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, as I stooped to pick up the mess.

Susie caught my wrist. ‘Liz.’ Her voice was firmer. ‘What just happened?’

I stared at her. Suddenly, I imagined what she’d just seen: me, shouting at thin air, hurling candles at the wall. I sat back and put my hands to my face. I was damp with sweat. I must have appeared insane.