Tamsyn Murray-My So-Called Haunting (5 page)

‘Where does he usually sit?’ I asked Celestine once we’d greeted the other psychics and taken our seats at the bottom of the altar steps.

‘It varies,’ she said. ‘He’s sat in the middle pews once or twice, but most of the time he stays at the back.’

When I’d been younger, I’d wondered why ghosts didn’t just sink through furniture. Celestine had explained that the habits of their physical existence were so engrained that
most people stuck with them even after their death. So they tended not to zoom around the ceiling and treated the world pretty much like they had when they were alive. They regularly walked through
walls, of course, but who wouldn’t? It had to be easier than opening doors. ‘And he never speaks?’

‘Not even to the younger ghosts. I’m hoping that he’ll spot you and feel able to open up.’

It was as likely as hell freezing over, but I nodded and scanned the church. The pews were filling up but teenagers were few and far between. Maybe Celestine was right and all Mr Distrustful
needed was a friendly face his own age to talk to. I didn’t have much else to offer him.

It wasn’t until the service was in full swing that I felt Celestine nudge me. I glanced over and she tilted her head fractionally towards the left of the church. My gaze roved along the
rows of the living and the dead until it came to rest on one ghost in particular. Younger than most of the congregation, he was slouched in an empty pew, his hood up and arms folded. Even from a
distance I could see the look of sullen distrust on his black face. If he’d still had an aura it would have screamed, ‘Get lost’.

He caught me staring. Feeling as though I’d somehow been intruding, I fought the instinct to look away and instead offered him the tiniest of smiles. He didn’t return it, just stared
back at me and raised his chin in mute challenge. So, that was how he wanted to play it – a staring match, the first to blink or look away being the loser. Without breaking eye contact, I
settled back in my seat; I’d played this game a hundred times before at my old school, although admittedly never against a ghost, who wouldn’t have the disadvantage of feeling their
eyes turning into pickled onions. But he was offering me a way to win his respect so I ignored the twitching in my eyelids and matched his dead-eye stare.

Seconds ticked past and turned into minutes. Then, just as I reached the point where I thought my eyes were going to burst out of my head with the pressure, he looked away. I slumped in my seat
and blinked frantically, while the service carried on oblivious around us. When I opened my eyes again, the ghost was heading towards the back of the church. I shifted in my seat but Celestine laid
a discreet hand on my arm.

‘We’ll be breaking for individual consultations in a minute,’ she murmured. ‘Go after him then.’

Fiddling with the zip on my jacket, I waited. What if I’d misread the signs and he was out of sight by the time I got outside? I’d have missed my chance and he might not give me
another one.

I needn’t have worried. He was waiting for me in the cold night air, leaning on a low brick wall opposite the church and pretending he wasn’t watching the door. The street-light
flickered on and off, making the soft luminosity around the ghost more noticeable. I hesitated for a nanosecond, trying to work out a plan, then decided I’d have to wing it. Thrusting my
hands into my pockets, I crossed the empty road and stopped about a metre away.

‘All right?’ I said, injecting casual indifference into my voice while wondering whether he was going to answer.

He stared down at the ground for a full minute before he replied. ‘S’up?’

I let out the breath I’d been holding. If he’d ignored me it would have been game over. ‘Not much. I’ve just come out for some fresh air. It gets proper stuffy in
there.’

A frown furrowed his forehead. ‘You’re not from round here.’

‘I’m from Edinburgh. I’ve just moved down.’

The silence stretched between us, but it wasn’t up to me to break it. We were playing by his rules and instinct told me it was his move. Sure enough, after a few more seconds he spoke
again. ‘You one of them psychics?’

‘Yeah.’

He looked at me then, his face a mixture of resentment and curiosity. ‘It must be well weird, seeing dead people everywhere. I never even knew they was there, before I died.’

You and the rest of the world
, I thought. ‘I’ve always been able to see them. You get used to it after a while.’ I gave a tiny laugh. ‘I was best mates with one
when I was really little.’

A look of surprise crossed his face. ‘For real?’

‘She was called Poppy. I talked to her all the time. Everyone thought she was an imaginary friend. It wasn’t until my aunt came to visit and saw us together that my mum found out the
truth.’

And practically had a fit when she realised I was psychic, but I didn’t mention that part. She’d calmed down over the years, but I don’t think she ever got over the shock of
realising I had the gift when she didn’t.

‘So your aunt sees ghosts as well?’ He studied me for a moment, then waved a hand at the church. ‘Was that her in there?’

I nodded.

‘You look like family,’ he said. ‘But your mum isn’t psychic?’

‘No.’ I decided that whatever game we’d been playing was over now and it was OK to introduce myself. ‘I’m Skye Thackery.’

‘Dontay Ambrose.’ He held out a fist and I tried to tap it with my own. My fingers slid through his and I dropped my hand with a shiver.

Now that we were on first-name terms, I guessed it was all right to sit next to him on the wall. It looked more natural to passers-by than me standing on my own in the middle of the pavement.
Not that anyone had walked past, but I didn’t want to risk attracting the wrong kind of attention. In somewhere like Kensal Green any sort of attention could be the wrong kind. ‘Are
you, er, from round here?’

‘Nah,’ he replied, throwing a scornful look up and down the street. ‘Kensal Green is small time, man. I’m from Hackney.’

I stared at him. Where had I heard that name recently? Then a memory surfaced. ‘A boy got really badly beaten there last week. I saw it on the news.’

Dontay’s eyes didn’t meet mine. ‘Yeah, and?’

‘It was a gang crime, wasn’t it?’ I heard my tone hardening at his apparent indifference. ‘He was on another gang’s turf so they taught him a lesson.’

He shrugged, but it wasn’t convincing. ‘You got to be careful round there. They don’t tolerate no disrespect.’

The cogs in my brain whirred. ‘So you were a gang member?’

A closed look came over his face and his gaze skittered away. ‘Might have been.’

The mixed messages I was getting were confusing. On one hand, he seemed almost proud of where he was from, but on the other, I’d sensed hostility towards the gang culture which seemed to
be part of his everyday life there. Hesitantly, I asked, ‘Is that how you died?’

He pushed off from the wall with a violent effort, facing me angrily. ‘What’s it to you how I died? I didn’t come here for no interrogation.’

He turned and stormed off down the street, passing a group of men heading towards me.

‘Dontay, wait!’ I started to call, but the words died in my throat. From the way the men were staggering along it looked like they’d spent the afternoon in the pub and their
slurred conversation was drifting along the pavement. The last thing I needed was a drunken run-in. With a dejected shrug, I gave up on Dontay and headed back to the Dearly D. I hoped he’d be
back once he’d calmed down, because underneath the attitude, I’d seen a flash of how he really felt: scared and alone. Sooner or later he’d have to admit he needed help. And until
that happened, at least I had his name.

On Wednesday morning I had to catch the bus because Mary had hidden one of my shoes, and by the time I’d found it I didn’t have time to walk. The downside of it was
that I was treated to a glimpse of the suicide ghost as we trundled over Hornsey Lane Bridge. Watching her tortured face through the window as we rolled by, I decided I’d take Jeremy up on
his offer of a lift. Apart from anything else, I was starting to dread my journey to school each day.

It was turning out to be harder than I expected to find out who the woman was. Once Celestine and I had got back from the Dearly D, I’d been straight on to the laptop, hoping to catch
Megan on MSN, but there was no sign of her. Then I remembered she’d mentioned going to the cinema with her parents and younger sister. None of my Edinburgh friends were online either; MSN was
so quiet it practically had tumbleweeds blowing across the screen. I’d spent the rest of the evening Googling both our mystery ghosts. Although I couldn’t find the woman I’d seen,
there were plenty of other suicides in Highgate to choose from, and they made grim reading. I shuddered in bleak disbelief as we scrolled through report after report of the desperate souls
who’d leaped to their deaths from the bridge at Hornsey Lane.

‘I so need to find another way to school,’ I said to Celestine as we read on. ‘That bridge is seriously bad news.’

She nodded. ‘I’ve driven underneath it once or twice and got a chill each time. I try to avoid it if I can.’

Google had more to offer when I tapped in
Dontay Ambrose
, but in a way I wished it hadn’t. He was from the estates that towered over the Hackney skyline, and his story had made the
headlines for all the wrong reasons. I understood why he’d kicked off when I’d asked about gangs. Although the newspaper reports claimed he was one of the London Fields Posse, he
hadn’t died because of it. In fact, his heartbroken mother had sworn he’d hated the violent culture around him, which explained his reaction to my questions. Hanging with a mate outside
the tall block of flats where he’d lived, Dontay had been caught in the crossfire of a drive-by shooting. Paramedics had struggled to stem the bleeding from the wounds to his thigh and neck,
but he hadn’t really stood a chance. It had been a tragic consequence of a pointless war; being in the wrong place at the wrong time had cost him his life. No wonder he was angry.

I approached the school gates with an odd mixture of anticipation and uneasiness swirling around with my Coco Pops. If Mystery Boy had blabbed to his mates, I might as well turn around and go
home because, by now, the entire school probably knew I was mentally unhinged. If he had, it wouldn’t really matter what I did next; the whispering would have already begun.

As I crossed the playground, I braced myself for the onslaught of muttered comments and averted looks. Dr Bailey was there, glowering at the other kids. ‘You there! Smarten up or ship out,
boy!’

I had his lines in my bag, thanks to Jeremy’s genius idea of typing them up using one of the handwriting fonts on the laptop. It’d taken minutes to do and Dr Bailey would be none the
wiser. He’d have to wait until lessons had begun, though; I couldn’t risk being caught apparently talking to myself again. I ducked out of his line of sight, my eyes darting left and
right for evidence that I was the hot topic on the gossip grapevine. There didn’t seem to be any. A group of Year Sevens giggled when I walked by, but that didn’t mean anything –
giggling came as standard with them. In fact, as I reached registration without a single thing out of the ordinary happening, I realised it could only mean one thing: Mystery Boy hadn’t
told.

Typically, there was no sign of Megan, so I joined the end of the queue outside the classroom and leaned against the corridor wall. One or two of the other kids nodded to me, and Ellie McCauley
threw me a dirty look, but there was no smothered laughter and definitely no pointing. I couldn’t believe my luck; anyone else would have spread it over Facebook faster than you could say
‘freak show’. Of course, there was always the chance that he was ill and that the true horror would hit me the next day, but I’d worry about that later. What mattered right now
was getting through today.

Mr Exton was late, an irony that wasn’t lost on me. I was idly dreaming about handing him a lunchtime detention when I realised a furious whispering had broken out among Ellie and her
mates. Here it comes, I thought, misery uncoiling in my gut; the nightmare begins. But judging from the excited glances they were casting along the corridor behind me, I wasn’t the topic of
conversation. It had to be someone pretty high up the Heath Park pecking order to send the McCauley Coven into such a frenzy. I twisted round and craned my head to see what the fuss was about, but
since I was pretty much the shortest fourteen-year-old on the planet, my chances were zero.

‘Hi, Nico,’ I heard Ellie simper and I followed her gaze. My jaw dropped open in disbelief. For the third time in two days, I was looking at Mystery Boy. Was he stalking me or
something?

He wasn’t returning Ellie’s admiring glances, though. His eyes were fixed on me, dark and intense. His expression was unfathomable as he slowed.

‘All right?’ he said, raising his chin in greeting.

I nodded, my tongue suddenly feeling twice its size and incapable of speech. Then he was past me and disappearing along the corridor. My frazzled brain scrambled to catch up. He wasn’t off
sick, which had to mean he’d kept quiet about my little ‘episode’ the day before. As grateful as I was, I couldn’t help wondering why.