All Sorts of Possible (21 page)

‘Rosie, what did you do? What’s happened?’

She put her hands to her mouth as the blood ran down into it from her nose and she wiped it away. ‘I’m OK. I’m still here. I pushed as far as I dared. I stopped when I heard
your voice. I’m OK. Go and look over there.’ She pointed at the hearth again. ‘Lawson was there. I’m sure of it.’

Daniel stood up and knelt down in front of the fireplace, searching for anything that might seem odd or out of place. The moon was shining in through the window behind him and he inspected
everything in the hearth by its silvery light. Written beneath the grate on one of the tiles in black pen was another symbol, shining like wet paint in the moonlight. Quickly, he started testing
each tile until he found a loose one, which he prised up with his fingernails. A tooth beneath it, a molar with a long tendril of root, attached to a black piece of twine. After plucking it out, he
crouched down beside Rosie as she opened the silver box and he placed the tooth into the last empty compartment, hooking it to the clasp on the underside of the lid. When Rosie closed the box,
Daniel heard something and looked round, trying to see what was there in the room with them.

‘What?’ asked Rosie.

‘A scratching sound, can’t you hear it?’

Rosie shook her head, her tongue wiggling in the corner of her mouth as she listened harder.

And then they both saw it, a grey column of fine mist rising from a section of the floor. It coalesced slowly into the blurry shape of a head and torso and arms. It was a man of sorts, up to his
waist in the floorboards, until he drifted free of them to reveal his whole body. He was hazy. Indistinct. As if fashioned from a delicate silk that was constantly catching in a draught. He stood
taller than either Daniel or Rosie, his cloudy grey feet hovering above the floor. The features of his face were blurred, but the eyes were bright blue and watched them keenly.

‘Who are you? Where’s Lawson?’ asked the man in a voice that sounded like dry leaves rattling in the wind. When he moved nearer to Daniel, the boy took a step back.

‘Dead,’ he said quickly.

‘Then what about the flask? Who has it now?’ The man drifted even closer. ‘You should tell me the truth. I can see a lot of things about a person if I want to, much more than
when I was alive.’ The blue eyes burned bright in the blurred face. ‘So I already know you didn’t mean to kill Lawson.’ Closer and closer the man came. ‘What else is
there, hiding deep down inside you?’

Daniel felt Rosie behind him, her hand clutching hold of his, the fingers clenching tighter.

‘Stay away from us,’ he shouted at the man. But the creature swept forward as if blown by a sharp gust of wind and plunged a blurry arm deep into Daniel’s chest, making the boy
gasp.

‘I can’t hurt you,’ the man whispered. ‘There’s no need to be scared of me. Not like Mason.’

Daniel tried to step back, but he seemed fixed to the man, a chill burning steadily colder inside him.

‘Now I see everything.’ And the man laughed and pulled out his arm. ‘If you think Mason’s going to retire when you give him that flask, you’re wrong. He told Lawson
the same thing, but he didn’t believe it. Mason uses people then tosses them away like dirty rags. Nobody rats on him because they don’t get the chance. He doesn’t trust anyone.
But it keeps him alive, at the top of the pile. He killed me on a whim a few months ago just because I’d done a job for him. Lawson knew better than to trust him. That’s why he put me
here to make a deal with me.’ He pointed at the silver box. ‘Lawson knew how to keep a person in the world even after they’d died.’

‘What sort of a deal did he make with you?’ asked Daniel.

‘To draw Mason into a trap you have to be clever. He’s paranoid. Alert to any trick. Lawson knew he’d need me to help him. He’s been waiting for weeks to tell Mason about
the flask, winding him tighter and tighter until he wants it so much he’s ready to burst. And I bet he is now. So tell him the flask he so desperately wants is hidden here, that the ghost of
Ashwell Lodge is the only one who can reveal it to him. Use the charms that Lawson made. Put them back where they were. Let Mason find them so he can see me. I’ll lead him to a place from
which he’ll never return. But bring the flask with you too. I want what Lawson promised me. I’ll only help you if I know you can give me what I want.’

‘Where is it? Where’s the flask?’ asked Daniel.

‘Lawson kept it here. But the last time he came he took it away with him. When he didn’t come back, I thought he’d left me here forever, trapped in this place.’ The man
began to drift down into the floor, disappearing from view. ‘If you can find the flask and bring it with you then you can get rid of Mason. It’s the only way to save yourselves from him
now.’

They pedalled as hard as they could down the driveway, not looking back until the house had vanished round the bend in the road behind them.

Daniel gripped the handlebars, the air whooshing electric around him.

‘Hey!’ shouted Rosie and, when he glanced round and realized she was struggling to keep up, he slowed and waited for her. Eventually, he looked back to see her standing in the road,
her hands on the handlebars as if the bike was the only thing keeping her up.

‘I don’t feel so good,’ she said as he pulled up beside her. When he touched her, she was trembling like a baby bird. Blood was coming from her nose again, splashing in three
big drops on to the road.

Daniel held her until she had stopped shaking.

‘I’ll walk if you can steer,’ he said, and he made her sit on her bike as he gripped the handlebars and pulled her, his own bike ticking beside him, and her coughing and
shaking as the wheels turned.

There were stars in every puddle that they passed.

‘I hate being like this,’ she said.

‘It’s fine.’

‘No it’s not. Nothing is.’

They kept going for some time, not speaking, until Rosie summoned enough strength to say something. ‘He’s not like your father,’ she said. ‘They’re not the same at
all. That man was dead. He said so.’

‘Not all of him was.’ When she opened her mouth to say something, Daniel got there first. ‘Do you feel ready to ride a bit more? It’s late and we need to get you
home.’ He pointed at Cambridge in front of them, glowing in the distance like some fairy forest. ‘We’ve still got a way to go.’

Rosie nodded. ‘Yes, in a moment. I think I might be able to.’

‘Perfect.’

When Rosie decided she had enough strength to start peddling for herself, they speeded up a little, Daniel keeping close to her, watching her as she wobbled, his heart lurching whenever she did.
But they managed to keep going.

‘Daniel, how are we going to find the flask?’ asked Rosie as they cycled down the street towards her house.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Are all of Lawson’s memories really burned out?’

‘I think they are, yes. I can’t find anything inside me at all.’

Rosie braked. Slipped her feet off the pedals on to the road to keep her steady.

‘I can’t make the fit again. Not now. That last time . . . something happened. I’m too scared to try.’

‘We’ll find the flask another way.’

‘What way?’

‘I’ll figure it out. There’s someone I know who might be able to help.’

‘Who?’

‘You don’t know them.’

‘But—’

She stopped when the front door to her house opened and they both realized how loud their voices must have been in the still night.

‘ROSIE?’ It was her mother, backlit by the light in the hallway until she started trotting down the steps to the driveway. ‘Rosie, where have you been?’ Her voice rang
out as Rosie hissed at Daniel to go.

‘I’ll find the flask. I will,’ he said and started to peddle.

He heard them arguing in the street. Her mother’s worried voice ringing shrill and excited round the houses. Daniel found it strangely comforting. The love that Rosie’s mother had
for her, coming out in all its anger, seemed so clean and pure and undiluted. He stopped and hid in an alley and listened in secret to them arguing until they went inside.

As he cycled slowly, wending through the streets, he pretended that his father was waiting at home for him, ready to be angry too. But he knew there was only his aunt, and however angry she
might be it would not feel the same at all because it wouldn’t be his father’s love ringing out at him the way he craved.

When he did reach home, all the lights were off and it shocked him for a moment. He wondered if his aunt was even there. He crept upstairs and saw the line of white light
beneath her bedroom door disappear with a tiny click.

Daniel stood there, waiting to see if she might appear. But she didn’t. Suddenly, he wanted her to. He wanted to go and bang on her door and demand it. But after the red surge in him had
disappeared he found himself thinking that it was just enough for now that she was there, that the light had been on and then gone off with a simple-sounding click as soon as he had come home. For
the first time since she had arrived in his life, he was glad that she was here. It was like a lens had been put in front of his eyes and he was seeing everything more clearly, imagining the world
from her point of view and not just his own. He wondered why it had happened. Where it was coming from. He tried to trace his thinking back to its source, stopping when he remembered how Rosie had
hugged him and told him he wouldn’t be alone. Somehow, she had unlocked his heart to a love in the world that he hadn’t been able to see before.

But, as he got himself ready for bed, he soon got to thinking about his dad again, feeling guilty for even thinking about his aunt in a way his father wouldn’t have ever wanted him to. So
he buried the good thoughts about her deep down inside him until being in the house without his dad felt wrong, just like it had done for the last few days. Not standing in the bathroom brushing
his teeth. Not sitting on the loo. Not even standing in his bedroom about to undress.

‘We’re not staying here,’ Daniel said to his reflection in the mirror on his bedside table.

He went to the shed in the garden and sat in the armchair he and his father had carried there some months ago when the snow had been thick on the ground, which seemed like an age ago.

The seat was lumpy. The broken springs creaked as Daniel tried to get comfortable until he was looking up past his grasshopper-sized thighs at the wall in front of him.

A line of empty bottles was webbed together on a rickety shelf.

There were magazines fat with damp piled on the floor.

A pair of shears was hanging from a nail, like the skeleton of some ancient bird.

The shed was a place full of forgotten, meaningless things, bereft of purpose and left to rot.

And it was here that Daniel managed to fall asleep.

When he opened his eyes, it was still dark and he knew he had dozed off, the crick in his neck driven in deep like a nail. His hands were cold and he hid them under his
sweatshirt in the warm beside his stomach. He noodled the springs in the chair to try and get more comfortable and then stopped when a light played across the window, drawing a white stripe across
the inside of the shed.

At first he thought it must be his aunt, with a torch. He held his breath, trying to listen. Nothing. Not a sound. He crept to the window and pulled apart the cobwebs. The glass was milky with
moonlit dirt, but he could see the shape of a man standing in the garden, the light flashing as he moved, looking for something.

Suddenly, the figure stopped and turned to look right at him, the light from the torch shining into his face. But Daniel knew who it was immediately and flung open the door, running into the
white tunnel of light.

But then the torch suddenly flipped up and pointed at the sky because his father was off balance, falling backwards into a deep dark sinkhole that was opening in the lawn behind him. Daniel
rushed across the grass until he was teetering on the edge of the hole. He could see his father and the torch falling into the black bottomless pit so he jumped in too, feet first, falling straight
and true like an arrow being fired downwards. As he looked up, the wind rushing in his ears, he saw people standing around the edge of the hole. His aunt. Bennett. Rosie. James. They were looking
down and shouting at him to come back. But Daniel couldn’t stop as their voices rang round and round the dark black walls of the sinkhole . . .

Daniel woke up, blinking in the early morning sunlight coming through the window of the shed.

The phone Mason had given him was ringing in his trouser pocket, working still despite its cracked screen. His finger hovered over the answer button. But he didn’t press it.

When the ringtone stopped, he sighed with relief, but a moment later the phone started up again. He turned it to mute and hid it back in a pocket.

When he closed the shed door behind him, Daniel’s hands were shaking as they lifted the latch, then clinked it down. He turned round to stare at the lawn where the sinkhole had opened in
his dream and then he started walking across the green springy turf towards the house.

As he got closer to the back door, he realized his aunt was watching him through the kitchen window, her forearms up to their elbows in a thick crust of foam as she did the washing-up.

She didn’t say a word as he opened the back door and walked through the kitchen and went upstairs.

Daniel spent the morning with Bennett, determined to find the tramp from the train. They walked the main streets where people often sat and begged for money, gradually
venturing into the smaller alleys and cut-throughs like two explorers mapping the tributaries of some dried-out river system.

Eventually, they reached Jesus Green and saw a group of them sitting underneath an oak tree, the sun dappling their shoulders. Despite the heat, they were wearing thick coats and jumpers,
passing a bottle of vodka between them, taking swigs as if it was only spring water catching the light.

Their talking was babble and burble and burps and laughter.