DEAD GOOD (11 page)

This is nothing she hasn’t said already and to be honest I’m getting a bit bored with it now. Leo’s been standing in the corner of my room just observing if that’s what you can call it. He’s been listening, nodding occasionally, laughing a lot, rocking on his heels at some of the frankly ridiculous ideas Amber’s been coming out with, but he hasn’t said a word. He doesn’t need to. And I can categorically confirm that Amber cannot see him. She is not the psychic she believes she is and that really is that.

‘Y’know it said in this book that I read….’ She is jabbering on again and I need to stop her before either Leo passes out with laughter or I smack her round the face.

I watch Leo go over and sit on the end of my bed. He’s stopped grinning now and seems to be finally interested in something Amber has to say.

She plonks herself down right next to him, in fact so close that he even edges away from her slightly. Weird. ‘Apparently it was something to do with an electric fire or something… here…’ she hands me a printout of a newspaper story. ‘It’s really quite sad, don’t you think?’ she tilts her head to emphasise how really quite sad she thinks this is although in reality I think she is still loving it.

I take the piece of paper from her, not really reading the facts properly because I know them already – after all I’ve had a first-hand account from one of the victims haven’t I? I’m more interested in the photographs that are sitting alongside the piece. There’s Leo’s grandparents smiling together in a restaurant. Then there’s another one of Leo and Mia in the sun. They’re laughing and he’s got his arm around her shoulder. The caption says: “the last photo taken of the children, Leonardo and Mia Gardella”. The word “last” makes me shiver slightly. Mia’s gappy grin in the photograph confirms that she is the girl that Davey was playing a game with in his bedroom the other night and the huge, happy smile on Leo’s face makes me realise that I have, indeed been chatting with a dead person for the past two days. My heart races and my head feels ready to burst.

‘So?’ Amber is quivering with anticipation. ‘He’s gorgeous, isn’t he? I wonder if he went to our school? But … we’d remember someone as fit as him, though, wouldn’t we? Well I mean, I would, certainly…’

I look up at her, still holding the article. ‘I know…’ I say.

‘Well…I’m just saying. So… okay then – shall we make a start?’ she shakes her head of gorgeous ghosts. ‘With some exercising?’

Exercising, exercising… did we say we’d be doing any…. Oh, wait a minute, she’s talking about exOrcising, isn’t she? Sending Leo and his family into the Light so that they may Pass Over. Oh good grief.

‘So… how do you know that this is what we’re supposed to be doing?’ I try. ‘I mean – what if we start doing something that they don’t actually want to happen to them and we make things worse than they already are?’

‘Oh, Mads, come on now – how could you get any worse than living in a haunted house?! How could giving them a gentle little push in the right direction make anything any worse than it is already? Surely you don’t want them popping up and spooking you at all hours of the night…’

‘And day…’

‘See – and the day time as well – crikey…’ she seems to have only just digested this fact, ‘I didn’t realise you could see ghosts during the daytime, I thought that…’

‘They’re a little more transparent during the day,’ I recite, ‘the light makes them more difficult to see but you can still hear them the same…’

‘Oh. I see…. I see,’ Amber is taking this in and analysing it in her brain. If I’m not mistaken she’s a bit put out that I seem to know so much about our ghosts, considering she’s supposedly already given herself the position of Ghost-know-it-all Supreme Commander in Chief.

‘…anyway, I think…I read that somewhere…’ I add as an afterthought. I don’t want her to think I’m as keen as she is with all this haunting mumbo-jumbo.

‘So let’s get started, shall we?’ she leaps excitedly from my bed and onto the floor. Which actually is no mean feat, considering, like I’ve said, the room is probably all of about two foot square or something. I don’t know for sure, I haven’t measured precisely but it’s tiny. And shitty. Did I mention it’s…

‘Heee-eeey, now! Steady on!’ Leo lurches forward to join Amber on the floor. ‘Don’t forget, this is my house as much as it is yours – probably moreso, considering we lived here for longer than you have. And… er… how long have you lived here again? Oooh, let me work it out – without the aid of a calculator…’ he echoes my thoughts of earlier. ‘What is it now, about thirty six hours or so – give or take?’ He turns away from me and focuses on Amber who is now spreading out playing card-sized pieces of paper in a circle in front of her.

I scowl at him but take his point. I should stop dissing his home. After all, as he quite rightly just pointed out, he did live here longer – in fact he’s still living here, kind of, isn’t he?

I ease myself onto the floor to join them. I mean her. Oh, whatever. I sit on the floor in front of the cards which all have letters of the alphabet stuck on the reverse, and then there’re two extra cards which say simply “yes” and “no”.

‘Oh goody!’ Leo says sarcastically, rubbing his hands and beaming at me, ‘We’re going to play Happy Families!’

fourteen

Nothing has happened for about fifty nine minutes. Unless you count the fact that Leo has stood up, walked about, walked through my bed, out of the room to see what’s happening downstairs because I heard raised voices coming from mum and dad and he must have heard the concerns I was thinking. He’s also popped in to check that Mia’s doing okay with Davey as it’s raining and he’s therefore housebound. They’re fine apparently. They’re playing “tag” which must make Davey look like a total idiot because how must it look if mum and dad see him chasing after nothing all over the place and then running away as if escaping an equally absolute nothing?

Ah well, what can I do?

‘…anything… any noise at all… or just move the glass…’ Amber is repeating for the millionth time.

‘Seriously, Amber, perhaps it’s because it’s not a glass?’ I try. ‘Maybe the spirits can’t move plastic beakers – maybe it’s, I don’t know, beneath them or something… shall I go and get a proper “glass”… glass?’

Amber brushes my comments away with a sharp flick of her hand and does a “zip” across her mouth. Bloody cheek! Who the hell does she think she is anyway? Coming in here with all her stupid limbo-mumbo-jumbo and making out she knows so much about contacting spirits from the Other Side. Jeez.

‘Your mum and dad aren’t talking to each other now,’ Leo reports as he glides back through my bedroom door and rests on the end of my bed again.

I sigh. ‘Oh… great…’ And Amber glares at me angrily.

I scowl and mouth an equally angry ‘what?!’ back at her. God, it’s very difficult trying to be in two places at once. I’m up here trying to maintain an air of interest whilst my deluded friend is doing her best to converse with the dead and meanwhile downstairs it sounds as if my parents have done ripping each other to bits and are now visiting Coventry. Brilliant. I can’t wait to get back to school actually. Away from all this crap. And I don’t often say that on a Sunday evening. To be honest I don’t often say that at all. Things must be bad.

‘I think the ley-lines must be wrong here,’ Amber finally surrenders, sitting back and taking her fingers off the beaker. ‘ I think perhaps because it’s Sunday they’re out of alignment. That’s probably it. Maybe we should try something else… perhaps during the week – d’you think?’ She looks a little downhearted. Even Leo looks sorry for her. Suddenly he bounces up from the bed and disappears out of the room as if he either got a spring up his bum or he’s had an idea. I want to ask but I can’t and the suspense is killing.

Then there’s a loud knock at the door. Amber spins to face me and my first reaction is to leap on and bundle all the letter-cards together, or at least turn them over so that mum or dad – whoever it is – think that at worst we’ve been shirking homework and instead playing 21 card brag (whatever that is). Amber’s eyes are on stalks, though. She creeps s-l-o-w-l-y to the door and opens it a crack, peering round. Then she flings the door wide open and gasps really loudly, as if she’s seen something positively unbelievable.

There’s nothing there. Well, that’s not strictly true – Leo is there, well, he was there, but when Amber threw the door wide open, he stepped in – through her I must add – and now he’s standing here giggling like a girl with one hand across his mouth. His shoulders are shaking with uncontrollable hilarity. He’s such a prat. But Amber’s face is a picture. In fact I’m trying very hard to stifle a grin myself. And – alright then, so if I could I’d definitely be laughing alongside my stupid ghost guest here, but I can’t can I? Amber is totally gobsmacked. That’s two gobsmackings in one day – it must be a Preston first.

Ever so slowly, Amber begins to regroup and I go over to her side and lead her back to my bed for a well-deserved sit down.

‘Did you see that?’ she trembles, still staring at the open doorway.

‘No.’ I have to lie. It’d be pretty hard saying “actually yeah – and did you feel that dead person who walked straight through you and is now laughing hysterically beside me here – at you?!” well it would, wouldn’t it?

‘There was a knock on your door!’ Amber says in a strangulated whisper. ‘But there was nobody there!’

‘Amber – that’s not scary or even unusual, I’m afraid,’ I tell her. ‘If you had a three year old crazy for a brother then you wouldn’t be quite so amazed, believe me!’

‘But your brother is downstairs!’ she gapes up at me.

‘Ah – now that’s what he wants you to think, Amber, he’s a clever little sod, really he is – he learnt everything he knows from me!’ I praise my quick thinking with that one.

‘But I heard…..’ she says flatly, pointing to the door.

‘I know you did, Amb. Now let’s get this all cleared up before mum has one of her hissy fits, then I’ll walk you back home so I’ve still got time to copy up your History notes for tomorrow when I get back, yeah?’

‘But….. you must have heard it, Mads, you MUST have?’

‘I’m not sure what I heard, Amb. Or… perhaps it’s just you that the ghosts come through for, after all, eh? Maybe they can only receive your channel and nobody else’s, hmm? Have you thought of that? Perhaps that was their way of saying “tune in another night for some more of the same”?’ I do a little air quote and try to sound like an announcer off the telly.

‘Are you taking the piss, Madeline?’ she scowls back at me.

‘Only a little bit, Amb,’ I confess. ‘You must admit, though, this is all a bit funny, isn’t it? I mean ghosts? Spirits, the Other Side? Come on, who are we trying to kid?’ I force a laugh for good measure and help her to her feet.

We start to walk through the open bedroom door and then my heart plummets as Davey leaps to the top of the stairs, pushes us out of the way and rounds the corner, speeding across the landing to his room as if there’s a wolf at his heels after his blood.

‘I….’ Amber starts, pointing to my brother, but I stop her with a silencing palm.

‘Er… I think that’s enough for one night, don’t you?’ I say to her as a doctor might a mental patient and she shuts her mouth again and lets me lead her downstairs.

Leo walks with us all the way back to Amber’s and it’s only once she’s settled at her house…her lovely big house with her lovely big bedroom and her lovely….

‘Hey, hey, watch what you’re thinking – or about to think!’ he rounds on me. I smile in apology. I haven’t even remembered to bring my iPod, dammit.

Anyway, it’s only once we’ve started our return journey that I find the courage to ask him about how he appeared in Amber’s bedroom yesterday.

‘So you must have been there before, then,’ I say, hoping he can’t see how embarrassed I feel asking him this. ‘If you could go back there now I mean – wasn’t that how you said it works?’