I listen for a moment. My ears feel like they can hear absolutely everything, and my eyes feel like they have widened so they can see more. I climb into the den, shimmying up the tree to jump over the undergrowth. I land right in the middle of the den, and crouch low. I wait. I look all around me. I listen. No one is here.
Quickly I unzip my bag. I brought everything I would need with me. I take out the candles and matches and the paper, and put the candles down on the four corners of the paper so it doesn’t blow away. Tonight I am going to be a proper medium. A medium is called a medium because they are the messenger existing partway between the spirit world and the living world. Which is neat.
I still get spooked when I’m doing the automatic writing, but because I’ve been practicing I’m learning to pull myself together and not be so jumpy. I had an idea at the memorial. Normally a spirit would haunt a graveyard, but Billie hasn’t been buried yet. And why would she haunt some morgue somewhere far away from me and her parents? So maybe she haunts the den most days. It must be the center of her power, because she was killed here, and it’s roughly halfway between her house and mine. I couldn’t have come in the day, though, because the police are still guarding it. I had no choice but to come under cover of darkness.
I light the candles and lean over the paper, holding the pencil loosely in my hand. “Billie,” I call softly. I hear a quiet laugh. “Billie?” My hand isn’t moving yet. There is a chill in the ground, seeping through my pajamas, and a funny smell. It doesn’t smell like Billie. I gulp, and whisper, “Jenny?”
Suddenly my hand darts to the page in front of me and starts to scrawl. I close my eyes and try to let the spirit wash over me, whoever it is. Within seconds, the chill at my neck is savagely cold, far worse than last time. I gasp, wondering if I have raised an evil spirit by mistake.
My hand keeps going, but I’m not really aware of it. Then my neck snaps backward really far, and it feels like it’s being pulled down toward the ground behind me by my hair. I no longer have control of my own body; I am possessed by something. The cold is affecting my breathing. My whole chest is pushing out, then collapsing in, in deep, gasping breaths. I open my eyes to try and look at the writing, but they seem to want to roll back into my head. Then my head falls forward and I let out a shout. It feels like someone has punched me in the stomach.
When I lean down toward the paper, there is a long story written on the page in front of me, and my heart is beating really fast. I press my fingers into my neck to feel my pulse. I freeze. Someone is standing by the entrance to the den. I look up. In front of me are five pale girls, including Billie. I know they are ghosts, but they look as solid as you or me. They glow a luminescent white, like clouds backed by sun. They start to walk toward me.
I’m trembling. I inch backward on the ground, and then there is a crack from behind me. I whirl around. An old gypsy man with missing teeth is standing in the bushes. He speaks with a smoker’s cough. “All right, dearie?”
I scream. All the terror inside me gets let out. He puts his hands over his ears. I don’t know what happens to the girls. My emergency mode takes over, and I blow out the candles, shove everything into my backpack, and run past him, scrambling over the tree, tumbling into the ditch, running up the bank out of it, and then through the trailer park, my heart pounding somewhere in my throat. Several dark figures are opening trailer doors to look at me as I go by.
“What’s going on?” one man says. Another tries to grab at me. I scream louder and angrier, all that spooked, jumpy energy leaping out of my throat, almost like roaring at him, and I pelt as fast as I can all the way home, as the barks of savage black dogs rise from the woods. They are the voices of the dead girls, calling me.
I run in and lock the door. I don’t think the police saw me on my way back, because of my dark clothes. But I can feel the dead girls. The Asian one, and the one in school uniform. It was them in front of the others. They are still coming to me, following me, spirits flying over the fields, lengthening as they speed over the soft heads of the wheat, crying out my name. I stumble through the house and shut myself in the living room. I take the paper out my bag. The Asian one spoke to me first.
My dad said I was bad. Then he was being nice to me again, and said, “Haadiya, we are going away for a treat,” but it didn’t happen. He told my friends I got on a plane and went to live in another country, but I didn’t. He took me to his mate’s house and beat me until I thought I would die. I didn’t have anything to fight back with. I managed to escape out a window. I was homeless for a while, then a man let me stay at his house. I thought he was kind, but later he did the things to me my dad had accused me of in the first place; ugly things. My mother still looks for me, but she knows where I am.
Written beneath this is another message, in different handwriting, blocky and neat. It’s a message from the oldest girl, the one in the school uniform. She was the first one who appeared to me that day we did the Ouija board in the den, and told me death was near.
A small red car slowed down near me. I was coming home from Tesco’s, eating a Freddo. Fucking weird thing to remember, but I love Freddos. I’ve still got the taste of it in my mouth. I was two minutes away from my house. I clocked the car to my right, and he opened the door. It was the bloke from school, the teaching assistant.
God, we all fancied him. I thought he was well fit. I’d have given an arm and a leg to snog him. It wasn’t worth what I had to give, though.
I thought he wanted directions. He said he’d drive me home, I said it was just around the corner. He asked me—in a cheeky way—if I wanted to come for a drive anyway. Just for fifteen minutes. I said okay. I was thirteen, and I’d planned to be having sex when I was fourteen, but I didn’t mind it being early for the right person. It was exciting, and he was being really nice. He drove me to his house without asking. We talked the whole way and when he parked he said did I want to come inside, just for a cup of tea. No shenanigans, he said, and he laughed. I said okay. We started kissing in the kitchen. He said he couldn’t resist me. He told me he’d wanted me for a while. He was leaving the school soon and he had to make his move. I started to feel sleepy and sexy. Now I think there was something in the drink. I woke up on his couch, aching. He told me we’d already had sex. He looked surprised that I couldn’t remember it, and then he said I must be ill, and he took me up to his bed. He was being really sweet and we ended up having sex again. It hurt a bit but he made me feel bad for complaining. He held me down and did it again. He was much stronger than me. He kept me there. He kept making excuses. He said he’d called my parents. There was a lot of shouting downstairs the next day and then he put a blindfold on me. There was a silence and I called his name. Then I was strangled. I was naked. I don’t like to remember it. I was my family’s only girl, the eldest of four. I was a tomboy and tough and didn’t take any shit from anyone. I thought I could handle myself. No one expected it to happen to me.
I kneel down on the carpet. My legs feel weak and my armpits are sweaty. All I can think is they must be giving me clues.
One of the girls mentioned a car. I remember something from the police report, about a jeep. I figure there’s also something in the messages about weapons. The first girl warned that she didn’t have anything to fight back with, and the second said the man was much stronger. Perhaps Billie would have gotten free if she had been armed or if we had already started at kung fu. The second girl was clearly killed by a pervert, because he had sex with her loads. So maybe the serial killer is a pervert.
I turn slowly toward the TV. It’s just the right time to do some research, because the sexy shows are always on in the dead of night. I pick up the flickerdeefloo, switch on the TV, press the mute button and find Channel 4. A blonde woman talking fills the screen. Sex and the City. I sit down on the carpet and watch some sex, but I can’t really see what’s happening. After the program finishes I watch Eurotrash. This is more like it. On
it there is a man in a black suit with only a zip at the mouth, someone who is trying to have sex with chickens, and a lady with bigger boobs than her own head. I’m pretty sure I watch some rape, with the suited man and a lady, or at least something like it, because it is really violent, fast, and angry. It’s as if the man is trying to kill the lady with sex. I shuffle close to the screen and peer at where their bodies are hitting against each other. I can’t really get a good angle to see what exactly is happening, but I stare anyway. “Hmm…” I whisper to myself.
“Thera!” I hear suddenly. I jump, thinking it’s the dead girls, but it’s Dad, in his pajamas. “What are you doing?”
Dad drags me to bed by my arm. He says something about not thinking about these things, and it’s sad but don’t go poking around for answers on your own, and “If you want to know, just ask.”
That’s not me, though. I always want answers. I have intellectual curiosity. Anyway, from his attitude, and his and Mum’s conversation in the kitchen about withholding things from me, I know Dad doesn’t want me to know anything. I can’t talk to Mum or Dad. They might lie to me.
They want me to stay innocent, but I suspect the time for that has passed.
After school the next day, Sam and I are in the back garden, playing Barbies and Action Men. We have made some of the Barbies into dead girls using Mum’s makeup. I haven’t told Sam about them yet. I don’t want to scare him. He’s making the Action Men fight them, and I’m thinking about ghosts.
At the memorial, a lot of adults got up and talked about Billie. The things they said irritated me, saying she was so sweet and innocent, and killing a child was like taking a life before it was a life. But Billie had a life. And Billie wasn’t an angel. She was a whole human being, and she was my friend. Afterward the vicar talked about heaven, and I thought about the dead girls and what the Ouija book said about spiritualists and nonspiritualists. I haven’t thought much about God until now, but I feel like it’s quite a simple question-and-answer when I do:
Question: Do I believe there is an old man in the sky, who decides what happens to everything and everyone? Answer: Nope.
I guess, whenever they tell stories from the Bible in assembly, I’ve assumed that they are sort of like fables: made up to teach you stuff.
I don’t find the question about God particularly interesting, but whether magic and ghosts are real plays on my mind a lot. Maybe Billie has got a lot of people wondering about this, because Sam brings it up just as I’m thinking about it. He’s using Action Man’s triple-action knife to pretend to slice Sindy’s head off, when he says, “Do you believe in heaven, Thee?”
“Um…” I run over Action Man with Barbie’s red convertible. “Do you?”
“I think so.”
I look up into the sky. “I think people are in the clouds,” I say. “When people die, they see a bright light at the end of kind of a long tunnel. We mistake it for heaven, but actually it’s a cloud kingdom. Everyone’s up there, and they can look down on you, except when you’re naked. My imaginary friends live up there too.” I frown, wondering about all the imaginary friends I’ve had over the course of my life. Were they dead girls too?
“Why can’t they see you when you’re naked?” Sam asks, his brow knitted. “Thera?” Sam nudges me with his foot.
“Huh?”
“Why can’t they see you when you’re naked?”
“That’s private.”
“I don’t mind them seeing me naked.”
“You will.”
“You think you know everything because you’re older.”
“Well,” I said, “I know more.”
“Hmmph.” He strokes the hair of a ghost-Barbie and whispers, “Do you think Billie is in the clouds?”
I think before answering. “Sam, can you keep something a secret if I tell you?”
“Yeah.”
“Promise? You can’t tell anyone.”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
“Billie’s not in the clouds. I’ve seen her.”
Sam’s eyes open wide. “Where?”
“In my room, and in the woods, and at the memorial. She wanted me to find her body at first, but she’s still here, trying to tell me something. I don’t know what she wants, but I think she can’t go to the cloud kingdom until she gets it.”
“Well”—Sam looks distressed—“you should find out what she wants.”
“I’m trying,” I say. “Maybe you could help me.”
“How?”
“I don’t know yet. But I’ll think about it.”
I decide not to tell him about the other dead girls. He looks spooked enough thinking about Billie.
“Do you think she’ll come and visit me?”
“I don’t know. It’s me that’s her best friend, though. That’s why she’s visiting me. She hasn’t visited Hattie or Poppy, or they would have said something.”
“Have you told them?”
“No. But Hattie and Poppy couldn’t wait to tell me something like that, to make me jealous. I’m not like them.”
“When you find out what Billie wants and give it to her, will she go away?”
“I don’t really want her to go away, but yeah, I guess she’ll go to the cloud kingdom after we’ve sorted out her unfinished business. She might come to visit occasionally, but she won’t be stuck on earth like she clearly is now.”
“But she won’t visit me?”
“Do you want her to visit? I could ask.”
“Not really. I’d be scared. That’s not bad, is it?”
“No, it’s fine. She’ll make new friends in the clouds anyway.”
“Do you think she’ll make a new best friend?”
“No, I’ll always be her best friend, and she’ll always be mine.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.”
“Who’s your best alive friend?”
“Mm…I guess you.”
“I was hoping you’d say that. You’re my best alive friend, Thera. And Tubby.” Tubby’s real name is Charles. He’s a white polar bear that sleeps in Sam’s bed.
“Thanks, Sam.”
We go back to playing Battle of the Barbies.
I wouldn’t discuss Billie and the dead girls with any adults, even Mum and Dad. They don’t believe in stuff like that, and I doubt they would want me talking like that around the house anyway, because Sam would be scared, and they clearly don’t want me to know or think anything about Billie. Adults don’t believe in things like ghosts, or teddy bears being alive, or guardian angels being real. Maybe it’s because children are nearer the spirit realm, having only recently come from it, so we can see these things.
I have a guardian angel. He’s blonde and beautiful and sometimes he holds my hand. Age-wise I’d say he’s probably a teenager, but I expect he’s actually as old as time itself. I won’t say his name because it’s a secret.
Our school is a Church of England school, which means we have Advent calendars, Easter eggs, the Lord’s Prayer, harvest festival, Christingles, the Nativity play, and BBC hymn books. It’s the type of Christianity that isn’t time-consuming. You don’t have to go to church much, and the vicar has a family and listens to the Rolling Stones. Catholic priests don’t have children or families, and they probably listen to classical stuff. My mum’s mum and dad are Catholic, and I’ve been to church with them before. The priest is always Irish and goes on forever and touches your face with his big, soft sausage fingers. Then Nan and Gaga have a bit of bread.
Dad says Christianity is a fairy tale invented to make you put money in the collection tin. His parents were Catholic and they almost chucked him out because he refused to go to church. But then Auntie Mary and Uncle DJ refused to go too, and you can’t chuck half your kids out, so they didn’t. Now they don’t go to church and Granddad is an at
heist. He says religion’s first mission is to self-perpetuate so they’ll say all sorts of crap.
Most people are going off religion now because it’s a bit old hat. It was bigger when people didn’t know anything, but now that we know how the world works it’s obvious that you can’t have a baby with immaculate conception, and dung beetles don’t roll the sun up every morning (that’s what the ancient Egyptians believed, so they prayed to the dung-beetle god). Christianity is all about believing in something that isn’t real. Most people say the same about ghosts, but I disagree. With so much life in her, wouldn’t that energy all go somewhere when Billie died?
“Do you believe in God?” I ask Sam. We are burying the dead from the battle now, in the sandpit.
“No.”
“Me neither. We’re godless people.”
Sam nods. “Yep.”
When we have finished and it’s teatime, I stand and give the sky one last look before we go inside. There is a big cumulus cloud (we learned about them in school) in the deep cornflower blue. I have always had imaginary friends who live in the clouds. I have one called Thomasina, one called Roberta, and one called Cleopatra, who looks like Hawaiian Barbie. They live in a beautiful cloud kingdom like the castle before Disney films, and when they come to see me, wisps of cloud form steps that they walk down. Hattie and Poppy think having imaginary friends is babyish, but Billie never did. Billie didn’t actually have any human imaginary friends, though, she had imaginary animals. Maybe I could always see Thomasina, Roberta, Cleopatra, and now Billie and the other ghosts, because I have a gift. Maybe Tom, Bobby, and Cleo were really ghosts too, and maybe these dead girls have been visiting me for a long time, to prepare me for what is coming. For what I have to do for Billie.
After tea (shepherd’s pie—yum, yum, yum), I make a list:
Dead Girls Page 13
