DEAD GOOD (8 page)

‘Wow! This is great!’ a voice says excitedly in my ear. ‘It just keeps getting faster, doesn’t it!’

Realising that my last thought concerned the length of my manbits, I am pleased to discover that laughing Ghostboy actually isn’t. Laughing I mean. He seems to be more fascinated by the speed of our broadband. And he’s even sitting on a ghost chair. It’s not one of ours, that’s for sure. Ours are pretty much made of wood, not mist. I scowl down at it and sarcastically ask him if he got it from G-Bay.

‘What this?’ he peers down at the legs, my attempt at a joke totally lost on him. ‘It’s ours.’

‘Ours who?’ I continue to scowl.

‘You what lovey?’ Mum calls over from her chair in front of the telly. Shit. I’d forgotten I need to keep a lid on it when I’m speaking to thin air.

‘Nothing,’ I call back. ‘I was just talking to this stupid thing.’ I wave my fingers in his face and smile sarcastically at my web-friend. He glowers back.

‘Tell me...oh…tell me….’ I sing, making up some crappy tune that she won’t have the first idea of whether it’s real or not. ‘Tell me lies lies-lies-tell me … sorry Mum - didn’t realise I was singing aloud…. ignore me.’

She tuts irritably but doesn’t even turn round this time and I hear the first few bars of Holby City strike up so I know I’m good for forty minutes at least. God knows where dad is.

‘He’s at the garage round the corner having a smoke,’ my misty friend tells me, ‘but oh dear me…so tuneless,’ he adds, pushing his hands over his ears, making fun of my made-up song - which I find quite unnecessary and quite hurtful.

I scowl harder at him and wait as he drops his hands, turns his head back to the screen and points to my search words of:

ferndale way family death.

I feel him turn his face to my profile and sigh. ‘You know what?’ he says softly, ‘if you want to find out anything about me…. my family… what happened here – well, you only have to ask.’

I nod silently, jerk my head towards the hallway, indicating the stairs and then log off.

In my wildest dreams, the first boy I ever brought to my bedroom was so not going to be a dead one. Seriously. This feels so mad it’s almost unreal. Not that I ever had an idea of the boy of my wildest dreams. Not properly anyway. Well, I mean I wouldn’t shut Ed Loake out, obviously.

‘Is he the boy you like then?’

I sigh. I keep forgetting I’ve got to try and control my thoughts, now that there’s a ghost with 20/20 telepathy in the house. I decide to ignore him. It’s none of his business anyway. I pull my legs up onto my bed and squash myself into the corner, automatically dragging a cushion onto my lap. Then I fold my arms over the top of it.

‘So. Fire away then,’ he grins, sitting away from me at the base of the bed where he was earlier. ‘Pun intended of course.’

I smile tightly. It’s a good job he mentioned the pun otherwise it might have been lost on me. I’m not always the sharpest tool in the kit – even though I try very hard to be. He smiles back. Shut up I tell my mind. Just shut up and ask him some questions will you – like how come he’s a ghost?

‘Ah that’s a really easy one,’ he smirks. ‘I’m sort of dead. That’s how come.’

I sigh. I’m not sure I like not having to bother speaking. It could be a good thing – or not. I’m undecided. But my mind just asked the dumbest question ever. I make a mental note to have a word with my brain later on – when I’m alone, obviously.

‘Obviously,’ Ghost boy grins. He’s clearly loving this.

‘Have you done this before?’ I snarl. ‘Haunted some other poor person until they don’t know what or how they should be thinking any more?’

‘Ah… I can see how it would be a proper pain in the huge dumb arse to anyone else… anyone living I mean,’ he laughs. I ignore him and he carries on. ‘But it is a bit addictive. Well, I mean there’s simply no other way of communicating as far as I’m concerned. Sometimes it can get a bit… busy… in the head though, but I’m learning to filter unnecessary thoughts out and just concentrate on the ones I want to hear. I think that’s the way forward. Wouldn’t you say?’ he tilts his head.

I frown. Is he teasing me now? He opens his mouth to say something but then holds it in. Perhaps he was.

‘So….’ I smooth the cushion with both hands. ‘Can I ask you some sensible questions then? Forget that last one – that wasn’t properly formed in my head and you had no right to respond to a question that wasn’t ready to be asked. So… shush!…’ I waggle a finger at him as he raises a hand in query. ‘Just wait until you’re asked…. Properly… with my voice… okay?’

He nods and does a “zip” action over his mouth with his thumb and finger. He relaxes back against the wall and waits, crossing his arms and staring around at the walls.

‘Okay then,’ I clear my throat of nothing. ‘Tell me how it happened. When, how, where, why… all the obvious stuff….’

‘Al-right!’ He sits forward slightly, his arms hanging loosely over his lap, his legs now crossed in front of him. He looks almost thrilled. Like he can’t wait to tell his story.

‘Mia… she’s my sister. Davey’s met her I believe...’

‘I’ve met her too!’ I cut in. ‘She was sleeping with Davey the night the house went… mental – remember?’

‘No. But then I’ll get to that bit soon. Anyway – as I was saying before you rudely interrupted me – Mia and I were here – at home….’

‘You mean this was your house!’

‘I’m sorry, Madeline, but if you keep interrupting me, then I’m just going to have to go and haunt somebody else – and …. Dur!’ he actually slaps his head with a hand like he can’t believe how stupid I am. ‘You mean you didn’t already work out that I lived here?’

I feel my cheeks hot up a bit. Of course I did. Didn’t I? Well, I would have worked it out if I’d had longer to think about it, wouldn’t I? Oh what-freakin’-ever…let’s just move on shall we?

‘Okay then… so we were here – at home. Our grandparents, our Nonna and Nonno – that’s Italian for grandparents if you didn’t already work that one out…’

I ignore this cue to make myself look even stupider. More stupid I mean. I blink slowly and boredly and do my own zipping of the mouth and wait for him to continue.

‘Our parents were out. Helping at my Uncle’s restaurant in town. Gardella’s have you heard of it? It’s on Mile Corner?’

I nod nicely even though I’m still really cross with him.

‘Anyway – so Mum and Dad were helping Zio Vittorio at his restaurant and Nonna and Nonno, they like to come round and sit with us – even though we don’t really need babysitting as such… it gets them out of their house and they feel like they’re helping out… you know how it is…. And Mia can be a handful at times, but Nonna’s very strict with her – better than I could ever be… ever was, I mean… she’s not so much of a handful now she’s dead, obviously. None of us are I suppose…’ he trails off.

‘From where I’m sitting, you do a pretty good job of being a bit of a handful,’ I make a sarcastic smirk.

He mirrors my smirk and readjusts his position. ‘Anyway – nobody’s sure how it started – the fire I mean. The reports suggested it began in the living room…’

‘Now there’s an ironic name for a room!’ I blurt out, then realise how tactless it probably sounded.

‘Ha! I know – isn’t it though!’ he laughs back and my whole body nearly deflates with relief that I didn’t upset him. ‘They said it could have been the electric heater we had in there – if she had the blanket round her legs like she usually does, it could have got too close to the bars on the heater and caught light that way. Nobody’s ever going to really know, I guess. She doesn’t talk about it much. I’m not even sure sometimes she actually realises she’s dead – that any of us are. She still goes around the house like she’s popped in to look after us. She even cooks still. Very peculiar.’ He drags a hand through his hair and some of it flops back over one eye.

‘Very,’ I agree, wondering how soft ghost-hair might be, ‘but… so your name then is…? I mean it’d be nice to be able to put a name to the irritatingly annoying face that keeps looming up at me out of nowhere all the time…?’

‘Ah, sorry, of course – Leo. Leonardo Gardella at your service.’ He does a daft flourish with his hand like he’s an Eighteenth Century Courtesan and not a Twenty-First century dead guy.

I smile and bow my head back. ‘Nice to meet you,’ I say. ‘Al-though…’

‘Hmmm – don’t worry – you don’t have to say it. I’m sure you’d much rather not have met me. I don’t mind. A lot of people don’t take to being haunted quite as well as you seem to have.’

‘A lot of people? You mean you’ve haunted others? What, like here?’

‘There were two other families – yeah – but they didn’t stay too long. Not once the reconstructions started anyway.’

‘Reconstructions… plural? As in there will be more?’ My head starts to tingle with apprehension. Brilliant. Just what we (don’t) need.

‘That’s something we can’t seem to control, though,’ he winces sadly. ‘It just happens. They don’t have a pattern and we don’t even really remember them properly when they have happened. We just know they have because we’re in the same place we were when we died. I’m flat out over there…’ he points at the doorway. ‘Mia is back in her bed…. Nonno is on the landing and Nonna is….’

‘In the screaming room…. I know – it’s horrific.’

‘So… your parents…’ I try to steer the conversation away from the dead to the living. ‘Where are they now?’

Leo draws his legs back up and into his chest when I ask this. He has a name. Leo. It feels funny having a ghost with a name in my room. Well, I guess it’d be funny for anybody having a ghost in their room – called Leo or anything else for that matter. He looks sad now, though and I’m beginning to wonder if I should have asked him this question. I bet he misses them. I bet they miss him. Oh god, what a horrible thing to have happened to them all.

‘It’s heartbreaking,’ he lifts his eyes and they look huge and dark and sad. ‘The way our parents are so alone now. I don’t visit them anymore. It hurts me so much to see the pain our death has caused them. The last time I went to see Mum it was too upsetting. Ghosts have feelings as well, you know. It’s just too, too much to bear.’

I feel a pain through my heart now. He looks so unhappy. Like he’s trapped and can’t do anything about it. I need to ask him something less agonizing.

‘So then – you can visit anywhere you like then, can you? I mean if you can visit your parents… not that you want to I mean, like you said… but… you can visit other places too…?’

He sniffs slightly but I’m pleased to see he has a small smile on his spectral lips.

‘God! I wish!’ he laughs. ‘We’d be at Disneyland every day just to keep Mia amused! No – it seems we can only go to the places we visited when we were alive…’

‘So…oh… okay. And how exactly do you get around… travel about?’

‘It’s weird,’ he says, leaning forward again over his crossed legs, a thoughtful expression on his face. ‘I just have to remember what I was doing last time I was someplace – when I was alive I mean – and then voila! I’m back there. ‘

‘So how do you visit your parents then? If they don’t live here anymore I mean?’

‘Oh, they live with my uncle now – at the restaurant. They moved in there after the fire. The council wouldn’t re-house them because they didn’t have kids… not a good thing to happen to them on top of everything else.’

I nod my understanding again and then as I’m nodding, a little thought starts to worm its way into a deeper part of my mind and I get to thinking…

Okay – so let me work this out - without the use of a calculator. He can visit all the places he visited while he was still alive.

So how come he was in
Amber’s bedroom
this afternoon?