Authors: Sarah Dalton
I laugh. “Sure
, you can come. You know the drill though, right?”
Lacey
chuckles. “You mean I’m not allowed to stand next to people pulling faces and twerking on them?”
“Oh man, I got thrown out of that cinema but it was so worth it.” I can’t keep the grin off my face as I remember
Lacey dancing around the cinema, rubbing her bum against the unsuspecting people on the front row. I almost choked on my popcorn. Unfortunately, my then boyfriend didn’t find it so amusing. “Mo still hasn’t called. I can’t believe he ended it like that.”
“Fuck him,” she says
. “Actually, no, don’t. Delete him. Delete his number, burn the photos—get him out of your life. He’s not worth it. You would think after everything he’s been through he’d have more of an open mind.”
I met Mo on
Magdelena Ward. I was in for schizo hallucinations, he was in for paranoid schizophrenia. I guess it was always doomed to fail, but the final nail hit the coffin when I told him about Lacey. He reckoned my “negativity” and inability to “see the truth” could tip him over the edge when it came to his mental health. I don’t blame him, to be honest. But that doesn’t mean I’m not disappointed in him. Why couldn’t he trust in me?
Lacey
leans forward and my skin chills again. “Seriously. Forget about him. He’s not worth it. He’s not worth
you
.”
Lacey
Holloway, the one-woman-ghost committed to bolstering my self-esteem. It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it. A hesitant smile forms on my lips, but then I remember how Lacey will never have another relationship and that smile is replaced by a heavy feeling of guilt: like a woollen blanket, familiar but itchy.
“Mum said I might have a holiday romance,” I say.
“That is a perfect idea. You need to get over Mo.” Her eyes widen with excitement. “I can be your wing-ghost.”
I start laughing, but then catch my reflection in my dressing table mirror.
My hair is long, thick and dark. Destined to never be tamed, it falls over my eyes and ripples down to my collar bones. But from the laughter, I’ve shaken it away from my pale, oval face.
My fingers rise to my throat, which has become
exposed from me tipping my head back. There I trace the lasting reminder from the fire at Magdelena. There I trace the translucent white marks left to me by Dr. Gethen. My nightmares are filled with that night. I replay it over and over. My skin warms beneath my fingertips, as though I’m there again. I pull myself away, move my hair over my neck, and try not to think about it.
“You’re coming camping with me, then?” I ask
Lacey. “Because there’s no way I’m getting through the week on my own.”
She wi
nks at me. “Do ducks fart underwater?”
I frown. “Eh?
”
She laughs. “
I dunno, my dad used to say it. Yes, Mary, of course I’m coming!”
To drown out the sound of me talking to a ghost, I put on the Yeah
Yeah Yeahs at full blast. Before long we’re wailing along with Karen O. Lacey dances around the room, crackling and sparking like a broken television. My suitcase fills up and I don’t even care about camping, anymore. At some point, I forget that Lacey is dead. I forget about how her body is in the graveyard three miles away, off the main road heading north. The Lacey I know is the vibrant, dancing, singing girl pogoing up and down with her arms spread wide. A rush of something—I don’t know what—fills me up from my toes to my ears. Maybe it’s that freedom I wanted.
*
The smell of exhaust fumes sneaks in through the open car window. The leather seats stick to my bare thighs, and the sound of honking horns is my soundtrack as everyone decides to try to travel on the motorway at the same time. In the front of the car, my parents argue while holding the AA road map across the dashboard. I lean back against the head rest of the back seat in our stationary vehicle, and zone out the traffic jam, parental swearing, and fumes by plugging in my iPod and escaping into the music.
A few hours later—
after a greasy meal at the motorway service station—we leave the major roads behind at last, and navigate the twisting rural lanes of North Yorkshire. It’s moorland here, heather growing amongst the spongy grass, stretching out for what feels like forever. Jagged rocks peek out of hillsides. The occasional sheep looks up and stares at our car, chewing its grass in a languid, deliberate motion, as though its mind is occupied elsewhere.
I lean f
orward, hitting the back of Mum’s seat with my shoulder. “There’s
nothing
here. What are we going to be doing?”
“We’re not there yet,” Dad reminds me, grinning at me in the rear view mirror.
“Positive thinking, Mares.”
I sigh and lean back i
nto my seat. I guess he’s right. I let my head swing to one side, watching the world go by. This bit—I like.
I love the way the
greens and browns merge together as the car travels through the countryside. Beneath me the car rocks like a cradle. I used to read wherever we went somewhere, but now I follow the landscape with my eyes, picking out the occasional stream, the flowers in the grass verge, and the black and white splodges of cows.
A fleeting memory pops into my mind—driving through the countryside with Dad, him slowing the car to a crawl so I can reach out of the open window and pick the long flowers swaying
above the reedy grass. He had one of those ‘Dad’ smiles—the ones where their eyes are sad because you’re growing up so fast. Then he whispered, “Don’t tell your mum. If she knew you’d had even a finger out of that window…” I’d giggled. Knowing that we were breaking Mum’s car-rules made it even more fun.
But then the world changes.
That safe feeling is pulled out from underneath me, as though I’ve leapt high into the air before glancing down to see the trampoline disappear. My heart freezes before it quickens and the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. My throat tightens. I clutch the edge of the seat so hard I feel the blood drain from my hands.
You would think I’m used to seeing them now, but I’m not. I never will be.
Standing like a scarecrow in the middle of a crop field, is one of
them
. Its skull shines through its face, and haunting sunken eyes stare at me, dark as night. A chill passes over my body.
This is a warning.
I call them Things. They are
hideous monsters conjured up by my mind to warn me when I sense a disturbance about to happen. Their existence had me sent to a psychiatric ward and fed anti-psychotic drugs. During that time I struggled to decide if they were real or not. Now, I don’t care. I’ve learnt to trust in them. I trust that their appearance means bad things, and now I have an opportunity to stop the bad thing.
Dad steers the car around a tight bend and I find myself th
rown against the glass. The hot, still air wraps around me like a stifling duvet. What if we’re about to be in a car accident?
“Dad
, slow down,” I say, a tremble in my voice.
“Honey, we’re running late. I told the campsite we’d be there by—”
“
I don’t care
. You’re going to kill us! Slow down.”
Mum’s disapproving eyes appear in the rear view mirror. “Don’t you dare speak to your father that
way. Have some respect, young lady.”
I grip the
arm rest by my seat. “Please. Slow down.”
“All right,” Dad says. The car slows and the landscape outside no longer blurs. “If it makes you uncomfortable I will.”
I let out a sigh of relief. “Thanks, Dad.” My palms are slick with sweat and I shift in the back seat to let my legs get some air. Outside, the sun beats down on the crumbling tarmac of the old road. My eyes search the landscape for any more Things hidden in the surrounding moorland. I pull in a deep breath to steady my breathing. Everything seems back to normal. I lean back against the seat and close my eyes. It’s a mistake; that skull face seems burned onto the backs of my eyelids, its grinning face mocking me.
Unease spreads over my skin.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the car mirror: little more than a tangle o
f black hair against pale skin. I’m even paler than usual.
Dad
pulls the car off the road and onto a track and I let out a sigh of relief. Surely we can’t have a car accident on a single track at five miles per hour. Mum jabs her finger at the sign by the verge:
Five Moors Campsite
Five moors. The middle of nowhere. How did she even find this place? It was probably on one of those discount sites she likes, the ones where they tell you it’s 50% off a five star hotel, but it’s only that cheap because they overcharge all year, and reduce the price to make it seem like a bargain.
The gravel crunches beneath the
tyres as we move along the driveway into the campsite. On either side the moors stretch out as far as the eye can see. They will be bleak in winter. I think of how the wind must howl and how the rain will fall unhindered onto the grass. I wonder about grass snakes lurking between the reeds. Today the sky is bright blue above the smudge-brown and green carpets. The sun is bright enough to make me squint as I stare out of the window. Up ahead, the static caravans come into sight, with a wooded area behind them. The trees line up in the distance.
Aside from the countryside and glinting white caravans, another sight catches my attention. I
n between the trees and the campsite there are tall, metal sculptures encased with blinking lights. I know what that means: a carnival.
At least there will be
something
to do here. Lacey’s gonna love it.
Dad pulls t
he car into the tarmac car-park and guides it into a space. When the handbrake goes up, he glances around him, as though waiting for the round of applause. In the middle of the campsite is a tall building that looks a lot like a small hotel.
“Why are we staying in a caravan when there’s a hotel here?” I ask Mum
.
There’s a
click
and a
zzhup
as we undo our seat belts.
“The hotel is expensive, honey,” Mum replies. “It’s one of those sorts that specialise in corporate retreats. There are lots of conference rooms and what-not. They do team building out on the moors
, apparently. I think there are some guided walks and orienteering for holiday goers. You should have a go at that, get some fresh air and exercise.”
I meet Dad’s eye in the rear-view mirror. I can tell he’s smiling without even seeing his mouth. When we’re alone we sometimes make fun of Mum’s obsession with how fresh air and exercise
will cure everything.
“Maybe,” I mutter, hiding my face from her gaze so she doesn’t notice how I’m trying not to laugh.
When I climb out of the car, the warm summer air hits my bare arms and legs, making me forget all about the Thing in the field. I stretch out my muscles, enjoying the little clicks your shoulders and knees make after being cramped in a car for hours.
Mum rifles through
her handbag, mumbling about travel documents, while Dad gets the bags from the boot. I notice a strange group of teenagers standing near the entrance to the hotel, holding battered old holdalls and rucksacks covered in badges and iron-on patches. They aren’t the kind of people I’d expect to holiday in Nettleby, North Yorkshire. They look like the Goths that descend on Whitby every year, the kind obsessed with Dracula and vampires. A tall guy with a lip piercing nods to me and I nod back, feeling it would be rude not to.
“Come on,” Mum says
, waving us on. “I’ve found our confirmation email so we should go and get checked… oh.” I supress a giggle as Mum reacts to the Goths outside the hotel. She has her back to me but I can imagine her frozen expression of disapproval. She turns back to us and whispers, “Oh, I don’t like the look of
them
at all. I hope we’re not near their caravan.”
“Stop worrying
yourself, Suzie Q,” Dad says, grinning at her.
Mum is
Susan to everyone except Dad. Quirke is her maiden name and Dad finds it hilarious to call her Suzie Q; sometimes it even stops her fussing over whatever the latest crisis is.
“I’m just saying that it seems strange that
this
place attracts
that sort
.”
I roll my eyes.
Dad sighs. “Let’s go and check in. It’s late, we need to eat, and we need to unpack.”
By the time we get to the hotel, the Goth kids have dispersed somewhere into the campsite. Some of them clutch cans of lager
, and one attempts to ride a skateboard over the grass. When it fails to move, the kid falls off and a bunch of his mates jump on top of him. The others stand around laughing and pointing.
Mum
tuts. “Look at that. They’re drunk already. Some of them can’t be eighteen, surely.”