“Bitch, you best have something important to say.”
“Errr… well, it depends how you define important, okay.”
“I define important as the house being on fire. And the lack of smoke alarms counts that out. So… this must be either worse than that or some weirdy girl shit.”
“Leo.” Dina propped one hand on her hip and tapped her foot on the floor. She had recently taken to wearing long sleeve t-shirts because it still was not cold enough for a jumper. The sleeves also covered up the scars on her wrists and on her right arm that she could not bear to look at now. It wasn’t the pain that always came in flashbacks that made her gasp, or even the memory of how they got there – it was feeling that somehow, someway, they were important. Not the wrist scars – that was a personal trauma she was dealing with through counselling, positive thought, anti-depressants and her friends never giving her a minute to feel sorry for herself. No. It was the inch long whip cut on her arm that bothered her. The fact that another eight people shared the mark seemed like it should mean something. Their infuriating slowness in healing, their tendency to split and weep dark crimson, it meant… God what did it mean? It was there. It just kept slipping through her fingers whenever she got too close.
“Well?”
“Not here.”
“No-one’s listening and, to be honest, no-one cares. Suicide girl.”
“Honest to God, you need to let that go, man. Nobody was hearing me then. They didn’t get how scared I was. Am,” she corrected. “But I’m getting there. And we have more important things to worry about.”
“Who’s worried?” He made a show of yawning. For the past week, he had been sleeping in the little room that Katie once lived in. At first, the move had been because Jaye was too ill to make it even the few steps into the room she shared with Dina but, even though Jaye was still holed up in his little corner of the world, he’d begun to like this place. The dolphin bedspread and colourful curtains, the wall of photographs and piles of clothes, right down to the overflowing sponsorship form on the desk for a cross country race three days ago. It all reminded him so deeply of her. Of Katie. It wasn’t manly and wild horses wouldn’t make him admit it, but he had shed more than a few tears into her pillow.
“Katie would not be impressed.”
Leo looked up, embarrassed. “What?”
“You. Sleeping in her bed.”
“Oh.”
“I’m wondering if I should ask what you thought I meant.”
“Uh, nothin’.” Leo looked away, feeling himself flush red. “You woke me up for what again?”
Dina raised her eyebrows in the direction of the little alarm clock by the bed – a little before noon. “How come you didn’t go home for the week?”
“Me and Dad don’t get on.” But that wasn’t it completely. He felt like he had a duty to stay here for his housemates – yes, his friends if he had to say the words. “And I don’t mind sticking around.”
“Wow, the emotions are gushing out of you today. She’d hate this little set-up you’ve got going here.”
Leo grabbed up a mostly clean t-shirt and jeans and struggled into them as Dina went through the photos pinned to the wall. She paused before the tarot card she had stuck up the previous week. HIGH PRIESTESS. A woman sat on a throne and looked out. But her fingers did not stop for long. They danced nervously over the wall and Dina was dancing from foot to foot. She couldn’t wait any longer. “Jaye’s gone.”
For a minute, time seemed to slow and Leo was aware of every breath he took, each hair on his arm standing up in cold alarm. Buttons fumbled in his clumsy fingers. His ears must be playing tricks.
“Did you hear me? I went into her – your room just and she wasn’t there.”
“I heard. Don’t know what you expect me to do ‘bout it.”
“You know what? Nor do I.”
“D, I am not her! I will not go haring off on suicide missions to save your insane arses.”
“No-one’s asking you to. But the other two don’t know yet. It… it’s sort of habit to come in here when things go bad.”
“We better go tell the guys that they’ve got one less mouth to feed tonight.” And wouldn’t that be a fun conversation. “Wait, you’re sure she’s just gone and not, y’know, gone.”
Katie had spent most of the morning curled into a ball on Dan’s bed, telling her as much as she dared about ghosts. Which wasn’t much.
The business with the Keepers and Shades and Shimma was Northwood stuff and it felt a bit like betrayal to talk about anything so specific. She didn’t want to talk about it anyway. Not about something that had done her wrong. She wanted to just turn to a friend and blurt out everything she knew. This must be how D felt. With the understanding should have come a fresh wave of forgiveness. But it didn’t. She liked Dina. They had almost died in that fire together. She trusted the other girl but she would never be able to forgive her all the way. The knowledge of what the town could do weighed heavy on Katie but it didn’t make her want to do anything as extreme as drugging a new arrival just so she could vent all the town secrets.
“So… how come you didn’t stay in Northwood?”
“Good question.” Truth was Katie had no idea why they had brought her back to Worth. Simple kindness was out of the question. Not that the Keepers were actively mean but they didn’t fanny around when it came to getting it done. And if being here served some other purpose – which it undoubtedly did – Katie was damn sure she was going to make every second count. “I just couldn’t leave you all like that. I hadn’t seen you in two months and you didn’t get to see me run with Mom and Dad. And I know it’s not the same now that I’m not real. At least I can say goodbye properly now though.”
Dan stiffened, pulled away from her and her face hardened. Katie ached to be able to pull her back into her embrace. “Don’t you dare say goodbye! Just don’t even think about it!” Tears sprang into her eyes and her lower lip started to wobble. But she wouldn’t let them fall. No child should have to bury another but that wasn’t what hurt. Having her back – that hurt. “You are real and you won’t say goodbye.”
“Dan, you know this is only temporary, right? One day I’m going to have to go back to my life again.”
“You haven’t got a stupid life!”
“My not-quite-death then.”
“There’s nothing waiting for you but a body bag and a grave with your name on it.”
“Dan. Honey.”
“Honey? That’s what people say to babies. I’m not a little kid, Katie.”
“No, but you are my kid sister.” She understood the outburst of anger. A year or so ago, Katie probably would have reacted in exactly the same way; rage and grief and confusion all mixing together to make one massive mess of emotion. But she was different now: everything she had been through this year had changed her. “And I want to help you.”
There was a fraught moment when light footsteps ran up the stairs and along the bit of hallway outside. They stopped by the closed pale green door, listening through the wood. Both girls held their breaths. “Danielle? Are you okay in there? We thought we heard shouting.”
“Mom,” Katie gasped.
Neither of them said anything more, but Dan turned the music up on the battered old laptop. Pretending she had been singing to The Saturdays or Little Mix was a good enough cover for raised voices. Apparently buying the excuse, Mom shuffled on down the hall and shut herself in the bathroom.
“Then help me by promising. Promise me you’ll never say goodbye.”
How on earth was Katie meant to do that? It was just plain wrong to make a vow she had no control over and no way of keeping. The Keepers had told her to say her last words, to see them one more time, which seemed to mean that they had further plans for her. Plans that weren’t in Worth. “I promise.”
“Yeah, as if.”
“Dan, I don’t know
what to do to make you believe me.”
“You promised you’d be fine out there. Give me one reason I should believe you now.” She backed up until her back was against the wall. “My God, Katie, you’re a freaking ghost!”
“How were my friends when you saw them? Did many people turn out to see me?”
“It was just a memorial. We’ll have your funeral here at the weekend.”
“Didn’t you bury me there?”
“We didn’t even see the body.” The body, not her body. “Can any of them see you? Do any of them know ghosts are real?”
Katie thought about how to answer that without confessing that half of them were already deceased but somewhere beyond a simple phantom. “I guess it depends whether they believe or not,” is what she settled for. An answer that was suitably vague, but sounded like it meant more than it did.
“I’m not sure why I can see you then. I don’t believe in spooks.”
And Katie knew then. “It doesn’t matter. You’re a kid.”
“I’m not-“
“The world hasn’t hurt you enough. You’re not jaded and cynical.”
“And you are?”
“I can see myself in a mirror. I guess so.”
“You know, even this version of you is – there aren’t even words. You just… you’re just you!”
“Want to see something cool?”
Dan raised her head, half interested but trying not to let it show. She shrugged. Katie knew that was the most encouragement she was likely to get today, and stepped closer. She was planning to try that thing she had managed with Eric the fireman. And rapist, her mind whispered. It was pointedly ignored. Possessing her sister for as short a time as a second or two would give her the access she needed to her sisters’ memories. All she wanted to do was sneak a look at her friends.
Noise too much noise people making noise so they don’t have to live in the quiet.
Everyone blaming each other blaming themselves blaming all the people who don’t deserve it.
Wishes wishes that never came true in yellow and blue
Order cruel and clinical the whole thing had an order to follow
No. This was too vague. Katie needed to focus in on each person, however unpleasant it might be, and take a good look. She needed to know that they were coping.
Nebulous thoughts hovered over Dina. Her healing whiplash seemed to emit a dark red glow from beneath her black blouse.
A familiar rainbow of conflict washed Leo as he wrestled with his own mess of feelings. Sadness, lust, faith.
Wait.
There.
An empty chair.
In shock Katie stepped away. Somebody had been missing at that service. Mom, Dad, Lainy, Adam… Jaye. Jaye had been missing. Nothing serious could have happened to her – she was a Shade and couldn’t get hurt or anything, right? Well, not hurt so badly that she couldn’t heal as soon as she thought to rid herself of the pain. Still…the sight of the vacant seat filled her mind with a thousand paranoid visions – and none of them had a happy ending.
“How come you didn’t tell me you’s in trouble?”
“Erm… huh?” Katie stared at her sister, dumb-founded. Did she know her that well that she could just tell from her face?
“Oh, come on, you cannot tell me you don’t know how that worked.”
A pause of bafflement. Both girls went back to the bed but this time lay on their sides, staring at each other. Dan’s feet reached to mid-calf on Katie but she was growing fast. “You made a hole so you could get into my head but I could go through it into yours too. You’re honestly telling me you didn’t feel it?”
Katie’s turn to shrug. Seeing the gang again had taken up most of her attention, and trying not to cry had taken up the rest of it. She couldn’t afford to get lost in lives she wasn’t a part of any more.
“Well, I did. And I know you’re scared about something. That thing I saw you with yesterday. Is it that?”
“Dan, I can’t burden you with this okay. It’s my problem. I’ll deal with it.”
“Just like you dealt with that guy who tried to kill you? Stand up and fight like a demon and then give it all up in the end anyway? Yeah, I got all that too. I’m a fast reader,” she bit off at her accusing look. The anger was not completely directed at Katie, although it partly was. “Just like you always do. Now, I’ve seen all the crap you’ve faced in Northwood, all the danger and stuff, and you always had your fiends to help. But they’re half the country away and moving on. Right now, I’m the best you’ve got. Spill.”
“I can’t do this to you.”
“So, you’re okay with that thing getting his claws in you and taking you back to whatever circle of hell he crawled out of, to live by his side for ever and ever? Wow, you’re adventurous.”
“Circle of hell?”
“Dantes Inferno. Mrs Baker said it was too old for me – evil old witch – but I was using it for art anyway.”
“I have to get through my first year at Levenson before I get to read the Inferno. You’re twelve.”
Duh, obviously she didn’t understand it that well, but Dan understood art and the pictures in and about the book told her everything she needed to know. The Inferno was Hell, and different types of sinner were consigned to one of the nine circles. It had been hard work to get Mrs Baker to lend her a copy of the book out of college stores but a fair amount of nagging and wheedling and – okay – downright stealing, had secured the book. It lay in the bottom of her school locker. She used it every day; reading a few sections then trying to draw the images that formed in her head but there was going to be a tenth level in her version. A level reserved solely for school teachers who thought they knew best.
“She’s a nasty one all right,” Katie half-laughed. It was strange that some things hadn’t changed at all whilst others were hardly recogniseable as what they had once been. “She’s only looking out for you.”
“I’m nearly a teenager, Katie. It’s Mom’s birthday next month and, whether she knows you’re there or not, I want you around. Not off being dead or fighting another battle you won’t win. Here. With me. With us.” She put her hand up to her own face and scratched her cheek. “Gross, I’m getting spots.”
Welcome to being a grown up.
“Who’s Jack again?”
“My boyfriend.”
“And some-one kidnapped him?”
“More or less.”
“Is it more or less?”
More. Way, way more. “He was being held in a bad place. Then I found him but I don’t know how to get back to him or how to save him.”
“Save him from what?”
“That boy you saw me talking to. The one made of shadows and secrets.” Katie had told her sister as much as she could but there were ways to say things without giving anything away. Because she absolutely wouldn’t be responsible for saying anything that put her family in danger. “It was chasing Jack… had been trying to get him for years apparently. He thought he was protecting me by keeping it there with him. Only it looks like it followed me back.”
“And now it could go for any of us. Sweet.”
“No. You’re all perfectly safe. It’s me it wants.”
“You think it might be, like, the Angel of Death?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know what?” Dan rolled off the bed and jammed her feet into her broken-down-at-the-back Adidas. “If I’m gonna keep up with all your crap, I’m gonna need supplies.” The door snuck open and she disappeared without making a sound. For such a clumsy looking girl, Dan had the self-silence of a dormouse. She didn’t even make any noise going down the stairs apart from the ear-splitting squeal when she likely trod on the cats’ tail. Probably on purpose. No, not because she hated it but it wasn’t even their cat. It was Mr Lee next door, always forgetting to leave the window open, so it came and crept in through the back door. An
d it was evil. Seriously, it was the first housecat Katie had ever seen destroy an entire armchair singlepawedly.
Hearing Dan opening cupboards and drawers through several feet of plaster, wood, and thin air – man, this supernatural hearing is a pain in the bum – Katie turned her attention to the window and what she had picked out during her little jolly into Dan’s mind. The empty chair… the seat Jaye should have occupied.
Where was she? Probably just nipped to the loo for a minute. Got caught up at the pool. Was outside getting some air. The analytical left half of her brain threw up all these reasons – then proceeded to reject each and every one of them. She’s in the toilets. Really? That’s what you’re going with? Sergeant Voice spewed derision into her head. Katie knew that anything she thought of now was probably nothing more than an excuse… a story she could recite so often it almost sounded believable.
Almost.
But she had no choice. The alternative was so much-
Me.
Coherent thought went on a last minute holiday. Lonely thoughts came unbidden. Nobody knew she was here. She couldn’t take up any weapons to protect herself. Suddenly, Katie was alone and very, very afraid. There was good reason to be; a dark mist snuck in through the crack under the door, circling around her ankles. She tried to step out of it but the black air clung to her bare leg like burrs stuck to the fibres of a coat or pollen in her hair during the summer.
Me. Everything that’s happened is because of me.
Katie stood at the window, recalling how she had lived almost this exact moment two months before – the day before she left for Northwood. At that point, Katie had been desperate to get away from Worth – her hometown and, later, her prison: stuffed with self-imposed solitude, bad experiences and a stifling attitude to her need to be a person in her own right. High school looked in the middle distance. Over half of her old class was at the sixth form there, probably muddling through much the same classes as Levenson offered its youngest students. Some of them had been her friends until halfway through the final year. It was the attack that had done it. That was how she saw it, what she put it down to. Looking back though, Katie had been pulling away from the group she hung around with for a couple of years. She’d never really let them get close to her. Simply couldn’t let anyone get under her skin. Maybe there was some inherent desire to be self-sufficient and never need anyone else. There was logic to that.
Maybe you were just protecting yourself.
Katie jumped. That was no voice she recognised. The voice she used to speak to herself was rough, tough and straight to the point. This sounded… kind. Kind and gentle and soothing. Maybe you knew you’d have to leave one day.
She turned around and looked down at her bare leg. Black shadows were still swirling around her lower leg but it didn’t feel frightening at all. It felt oddly comforting. As though it had no desire to hurt or scare her. Even though it would coalesce into Shadow Boy within minutes, Katie found that she no longer had any fear of it. Perhaps she should have. Because there was no telling what it might do now that it had garnered some sympathy. Things had a tendency to do that. Through the window, a pigeon flew close – so fast that there was no way it could not go splatting into the glass - but it screeched and arced up onto the roof at the last millisecond. It must be amazing to have those snake-fast reflexes. That sense of self-preservation that could lead you so close to the edge and then suddenly kick in and speed one away from danger before it was too late.
Thinking about this, and oblivious that the movement was anything but fortuitous timing, Katie twisted her upper body to face into the mid-sized bedroom and found herself staring at the head of a young boy cloaked in darkness. His face was still mostly a blank and he had nothing about him to give the estimation of age. He just gave off the impression of youth. And also of something incredibly old being forced into him.
Something ancient and soulless.
Something with a grudge.
Katie shifted her legs and faced him straight on.
Me.
Shadow Boy just stood there. Katie backed up until her back bumped against the window ledge. It put a precious extra few inches between them.
Me.
What are you trying to say? Am I meant to know you or something? Did we share some secret code in a past life? Because I honestly have no idea.
Me.
Not helpful. And did you say my name yesterday?
The dark figure just stood there.
Did no-one ever teach you to speak properly?
More static filled silence in her head. Oh, sweet Jesus, they didn’t, did they? Okay… Katie drummed out a beat on her leg as she tried to think of something to say. There was plenty to say but they all involved him being able to deliver a detailed and intelligible answer. Okay, here’s what we’ll do. Wait, do you even understand a word I’m saying?
Uuuurrrrgggghhh.
The noise sounded pained. It was like nails down a blackboard and Katie decided that it would have made her ears bleed if they could. Hush. Don’t speak. Listen, I’ll ask questions and you step back if you mean no and… well, just don’t do anything if you mean yes. Can you do that?
He didn’t shuffle back so Katie assumed it was an answer in the positive. Although a move back would have meant he had understood and accepted the code anyway… or maybe he wasn’t moving because he was confused. No, there was no more time for doubts. She trained her gaze on the misting black smears that passed for feet.
Were you chasing Jack in the Dead World?
He lifted one foot and moved it back, leaving it hovering about an inch over the green carpet for a long time before he brought it back and stood, impassive.
You don’t know. Great. I get the indecisive one. Do you know who it was, then?
Shadow Boy stood still. Every second that passed and they were locked into each others heads, his face peeked out a little more from under that mask of night. But Katie wasn’t paying that much attention. What he looked like wasn’t important. It wasn’t like she was going to have to pick him out of a police line up or anything. Eric Jones. He won’t get away with it forever. Katie shook the words away. Now was not the time for revenge.
Me.
Stop talk- wait, what?
Me.
But you just said it wasn’t- never mind, okay. Katie had a bad feeling; one of the kind that meant things were going to get a lot worse before they got better. Dying was supposed to mean stopping, or at least resting for a while, but this was harder than ever. Why couldn’t Shimma come here and tell her why the Keepers had sent her here? What they expected her to do. And now, with her friends getting on with their own lives 200 miles away, facing their own demons, she was all alone down here. Alone with Shadow Boy. With a tween for back up. As situations went, this way pretty sucky. You followed me back here for a reason. I get that you can’t tell me but you’ve been trying to drag me back into the Dead World. Once you get the words, we’re going to have a discussion about that.
Slowly, Shadow Boy nodded. The motion was alien to him.
Do we know each other?
Breaking the established patttern Shadow Boy stepped forward and opened his arms, practically begging for a hug.
“Screw it. I’m already dead. What’s the worst that can happen?”
Whether brave, foolish or just plain crazy, she stepped forward and let herself be enveloped by shadows. Furthering the impression of a young boy, Katie found she could tiptoe and rest her chin on his head, but that felt wrong. So she bent her knees and buried herself in black. A million images began to speed through her mind, Sky Plus on fast forward times thirty, making her want to throw up. Images she couldn’t even begin to pick apart until it was over.
Distantly, there was a high pitched scream, footsteps running, panicked words. All that Katie could attend to right now was the soul-deep cold when Shadow Boy released her, vanished,
leaving her slumped against the outside wall.
Chapter nine