The Misfits Club

by Kieran Crowley

  Amelia glared at him. ‘Well, Mr Brave Guy, why didn’t you go in and investigate, then? Why did you run?’

  ‘I-I-I –’

  Much to his own annoyance, Brian didn’t have an answer to that question. He’d run because Hannah had. It was an automatic reaction, but, just like Sam, he wasn’t proud of it.

  ‘Sorry about tripping you,’ Chris said to Sam.

  Chris had panicked and grabbed on to Sam’s leg as his brother was in the process of sprinting off, sending him tumbling to the ground. Instead of helping him up, Chris had taken the opportunity to race ahead of his more sporty sibling. He felt guilty about it now.

  ‘No problem,’ Sam said. He knew Chris wasn’t the bravest guy in the world. When he was younger he’d once had to hide behind the couch after being frightened by an episode of The Fairly OddParents.

  ‘And sinking my teeth into your leg, that was a panicked reaction. I’m sorry about that too.’

  ‘These things happen.’

  ‘Why were you in such a rush to get out of there, Amelia?’ Hannah said.

  ‘Because I saw something,’ Amelia replied.

  ‘Wait a second,’ Chris said, suddenly interested. ‘You actually saw something?’

  ‘Yes. Well, no. Maybe. I don’t know. I heard something, though. A ghostly sound.’

  ‘What kind of ghostly sound?’

  ‘A wailing,’ Amelia said.

  ‘Ghosts wail, all right, so her story checks out,’ Sam said. ‘Like cows moo, dogs bark. Ghosts definitely wail.’

  ‘Ah, rats,’ Hannah said, glancing at the time on her phone. ‘I’m going to be late. Let’s pick this up at my house.’

  ‘We have to go home as well,’ Chris said. In all the excitement, he’d almost forgotten about the family night. ‘We’ll have to wait until tomorrow.’

  ‘Wait a second. We’ve just had an encounter with a ghost and we’re going home like it’s a normal day? That’s mad. We’ve got loads to discuss,’ Sam said.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Brian agreed. ‘This is the best thing that’s happened to us in ages. We can’t just do nothing.’

  ‘We’ve arranged to go to the cinema tomorrow. It’ll be the perfect cover for us to talk about all of this without my pesky parents meddling in our affairs. For some reason, they just can’t keep their noses out,’ Hannah said.

  They ran the rest of the way until they reached Hannah’s house with a couple of minutes to spare. Mrs Fitzgerald was peeping out from behind the curtains when they returned.

  ‘Right on schedule,’ Hannah grumbled.

  When they caught Mrs F’s eye, she pretended she hadn’t been watching at all and began vigorously cleaning the already clean windowsill.

  ‘Club headquarters at ten tomorrow, then cinema?’ Chris said, and they all agreed.

  ❀ Amelia’s Journal ❀

  11.35 p.m. – I can’t sleep. At first, I thought it was because of the bed in my grandmother’s spare room. It’s all lumpy and bumpy and I don’t think she’s changed the mattress in about fifty years, which is kind of disgusting, but it isn’t just the mattress – it’s everything. I thought that coming to Newpark, and staying at my gran’s would be strange and it is, but EVERYTHING around here is kind of messed up. Gran was really nice when I arrived. She hugged me so tightly my bones cracked and then the three of us – me, Gran and my dad – sat and chatted as if everything was normal, which it really isn’t. Then he said goodbye and looked sort of sad and gave me a speech about being good and helping my gran because she’s not getting any younger. Nobody’s getting younger, Dad! If she’d hugged him, he’d see she doesn’t need help – she’s super-strong, like an ox or a superhero or something.

  After he’d left, I unpacked my stuff and cried a little bit. Then I had to go down and have my lunch with Gran. She’d made stew. I hate stew and I don’t like having my dinner in the middle of the day. Gran says she’s always eaten her dinner at 1 p.m. and she’s too old to change now. Then she told me to shut up with my whining.

  I ate a tiny bit and when Gran wasn’t looking I wrapped half of the stew in my napkin (the icky brown juices leaked through and I had to wash my hands about fifty times afterwards).

  Next thing, this girl Hannah calls over. I think Gran arranged for her to visit because even though I’d seen Hannah a few times I’d never spoken to her, except to say HELLO as we passed by her house. All I knew about her was that she seemed nice and didn’t look like she had a clue about fashion. Turns out she IS nice (and I was right about the fashion thing too). It was awkward at first – even though I try hard not to be, I get shy when I meet new people. My skin feels all prickly and I get really uncomfortable and I never seem to say the right thing. But Gran did most of the talking so it was OK. Turns out Hannah’s parents are strict, so we both have parent problems. We understand each other’s pain! Then she told me she had other people to introduce me to.

  Who calls themselves misfits? It’s mad, right? You might as well call yourselves losers. And even if you were a misfit, why wouldn’t you cover it up and pretend to be cool? That’s what I’d do, but not the Misfits Club (which I may or may not be a member of – it all got kind of muddled in the end). I don’t know them well enough to know how misfitty they are, but I do know them a little bit after today’s adventures.

  Sam seems nice, a bit wild and he can’t stop himself saying stupid things, but he’s fun. Chris too, but he’s a lot more uptight, the kind of person who always puts a coaster under a glass to stop a table from getting marked. Brian – I don’t think I really like him and he DEFINITELY doesn’t like me. It’s like I’m crashing a party I wasn’t invited to or something. I was perfectly polite, but he made a big deal of everything, said if I wanted to hang out with them I had to play this game called Gravest Danger, which sounds like the most childish thing ever, but was actually a lot of fun (not that I’d tell Brian).

  The game ended up with me in this creepy cottage in the woods and it had a ghost! It was terrifying. I tried to be brave, but I was really scared. I don’t like ghosts or spooky cottages or dust or spiders or dark woods, so the whole thing was like my worst nightmare.

  I’m not exaggerating, but I think I barely escaped from the woods with my life.

  When I got home, Gran didn’t even seem to have noticed I’d been gone. She’d been busy working on the farm all afternoon and told me she thought I was sensible enough and didn’t need her hovering nearby to spoil whatever fun I was having. That was a nice thing to say and if my belly hadn’t been churning with sheer terror, then I would have been glad to hear it. I rang Millie, my best friend at home, and told her all about it. She said I was the bravest person she’d ever met, that if she’d been there she would have literally died, so I felt a bit better. She also said that I shouldn’t go near the Misfits any more and they sounded like trouble. I told her I had no intention of ever seeing them again.

  12.05 a.m. – The thing is, if I’d been at home yesterday, my day would have been: sleep, internet, shopping with friends, FaceTime Millie, internet, sleep. Instead, I ran around a haunted wood and now I’m terrified. But it was exciting too. How can I be terrified and excited at the same time?

  12.11 a.m. – If I don’t spend time with the Misfits, then what else am I going to do here? Help on the farm?

  12.15 a.m. – I think I actually enjoyed myself yesterday.

  12.33 a.m. – I just remembered something. I was taking a selfie when I heard the wail. I haven’t even checked the photo gallery on my mobile.

  12.34 a.m. – THERE’S A PICTURE OF THE GHOST ON MY PHONE!

  12.43 a.m. – I don’t know how I got through the last few minutes without having a heart attack. I freaked out really silently. I didn’t want to wake Gran. Instead of hugging me (and breaking my ribs) and telling me everything was going to be all right, she’d be the sort of person who’d take me to the woods in the middle of the night just to prove the ghost wasn’t there. Even if she was right, I’d be dead with fear before I reached t
he cottage.

  12.50 a.m. – The phone is downstairs under the cushions in the sofa. I couldn’t bear to have it in the room with me in case the ghost climbed out of it and started walking towards me. I don’t know why I thought I’d be safer if it was downstairs. Now I think I should have put it outside, but I can’t go back downstairs. I want to stay here under the duvet where it’s safe and warm. I like my lumpy bed now.

  3.01 a.m. – I must have fallen asleep. How did that happen when I was so afraid? I’m awake now, though. Everything creaks in an old farmhouse. It’s terrifying. Why does everything have to creak? I can’t stand it! Am I being stupid?

  5.16 a.m. – The rooster just crowed. I’m awake before the rooster. How crazy is that?

  6.01 a.m. – Is six in the morning too early to ring Hannah? I really need to talk to her. Is she one of those people who are grumpy when they’re woken up? I think I should ring. Do the Misfits have a WhatsApp group? I can’t believe the ghost is real.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘Where are you going?’ Brian’s father asked the next morning.

  Mucky must have fallen asleep on the couch again because he certainly wasn’t an early riser. Even though it had almost been two years since Brian’s mum had left, Mucky often preferred to spend the night on the living-room couch rather than in their old bedroom.

  ‘I’m meeting my friends,’ Brian said.

  ‘Forget about your friends. I thought I told you to tidy up yesterday.’

  Brian had tidied up, but the place was a mess again. Empty biscuit packets were strewn around, an upturned pizza box lay on the floor, dirty dishes were piled in the sink. Brian didn’t understand how his father could make such a mess when he usually only left the couch to go to the toilet. There was no point in telling Mucky that he’d tidied up already. He’d only end up shouting at him and that would delay things. Brian wanted to catch up with the rest of the gang. He needed to know if they’d made any progress. He didn’t have any credit on his phone, so he couldn’t ring them, and the phone was so ancient that he didn’t have any apps to text them with – it was embarrassing.

  He’d almost finished cleaning up when the doorbell rang.

  ‘Get the door,’ Mucky mumbled. He’d fallen asleep again. He wiped drool from his mouth and inspected his Iron Maiden T-shirt. It was just on the right side of clean, which for Mucky meant two food stains or fewer. Iron Maiden was his favourite band. He’d seen them in concert over thirty times and still wore his hair long because he thought it made him look like the singer, Bruce Dickinson, who’d had long hair in the 1980s. Every morning Mucky combed his remaining hair across his head in the genuine belief that it prevented people from noticing he was going bald, a belief he held on to even on the days a gust of wind sent his long comb-over billowing in the air like a freshly unfurled sail.

  ‘Get me the mouthwash,’ he said, jumping to his feet.

  ‘Toothbrush and toothpaste might be better,’ Brian said.

  ‘Toothbrush fell down the toilet a couple of days ago.’

  Brian grabbed the half-empty bottle of mouthwash from under the kitchen sink and threw it to Mucky, who took a healthy swig, swallowing some of the green liquid.

  ‘Dad, you’re not supposed to drink it. You’re just supposed to swirl it about, then spit it out.’

  ‘I just figured that out,’ Mucky spluttered. He clawed at his tongue to get rid of some of the taste. ‘Oh, that’s rough. It’s a minty kind of hell.’

  The doorbell rang again. The caller was impatient. The bell rang every three seconds, then every two seconds and then there was no gap at all between the rings. Brian ran to answer it as Mucky spritzed his T-shirt with Febreze.

  Sharon Lachey, short, skinny and very pale, with jet-black dyed hair, was as pleased to see Brian as he was to see her, which was not very pleased at all. He’d disliked her from the moment he’d met her. She’d turned up in his life six months ago, when she’d started going out with his father. Going out wasn’t a very accurate term. Most of the time they stayed in watching television. Sharon said she had a job, but Brian reckoned it must be part-time because she was able to come and go whenever she pleased. She never seemed short of money, though.

  ‘You gone deaf or something?’ she asked, barrelling past him.

  ‘What?’ Brian said, pretending not to hear.

  ‘I said, you gone deaf or something?’ she asked again, not getting his weak attempt at a joke. ‘I’ve been ringing that doorbell for at least ten minutes. Make me a cup of tea. I’m gasping.’

  She plonked herself on the sofa beside Mucky, kissed him on the lips, which was enough to make Brian gag, then took the remote control from her boyfriend.

  ‘What’s that rubbish?’ she asked, changing the channel.

  ‘Ah, Shar, I was watching that,’ he said.

  She flicked through the channels until she found a programme she liked. A reality show about weddings.

  ‘Hint, hint,’ she said.

  It took Mucky a moment to catch on.

  ‘Ah, Shar.’

  ‘Don’t ah, Shar me. We’ve being going out for six months and you’re not getting any younger. I’m not going to wait around forever for my Prince Charming. And if you’re going to get married again it’d be nice if it happened while you still have some hair left on your head.’

  ‘I’m not going bald,’ Mucky said defiantly.

  ‘Well, if you’re not, then you’d better go to the doctor and tell him your forehead is getting bigger.’ She shouted over her shoulder. ‘Where’s that cup of tea? I’m dying of the thirst here.’

  Mucky ran his fingers through his remaining hair, as if to reassure himself it was still there.

  ‘I don’t want to bad-mouth that young fella of yours, but he’s awful lazy,’ Sharon said.

  ‘He gets that from his mother,’ Mucky said.

  ‘About time,’ Sharon said as Brian arrived with two cups of tea and a packet of custard creams. ‘Where are the chocolate biscuits? I’m not on a diet, you know.’

  ‘There’s none left.’

  ‘He ate all the chocolate biscuits,’ Sharon said to Mucky, looking shocked. ‘See, I told you, lazy and selfish.’

  Mucky had the good grace to look a little guilty. He’d been the one who’d eaten the biscuits. He’d actually eaten two packets of them while watching a couple of Clint Eastwood films the evening before after she’d left for work. He looked at Brian, his eyes pleading with him not to betray him to Sharon.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ Brian said.

  She slapped him on the belly. ‘Keep eating all the biscuits and you’ll be too fat to fit into your page-boy outfit.’

  ‘Page boy? I’m twelve. I can’t be a page boy. I’m far too old.’

  ‘If Sharon wants you to be a page boy, you’ll be a page boy,’ Mucky said.

  ‘But you haven’t even agreed to get married yet,’ Brian said.

  Mucky looked confused for a moment, then it seemed to dawn on him. ‘Oh, yeah.’

  ‘That’s the kind of dress I want,’ Sharon said, pointing at the screen.

  The woman on the screen was wearing a huge yellow dress that made her look as if she was auditioning for the part of a gigantic rubber duck. Brian didn’t know much about wedding dresses, but it looked horrible to him.

  ‘It looks expensive,’ Mucky said.

  ‘Don’t worry about that. I’ll be coming in to some money soon.’

  ‘Really?’ Mucky said, brightening up.

  Sharon turned to Brian, her brow furrowing. ‘Can’t you go to your room or something, kid? Give your old man and myself some privacy. It’s rude to hang around like a bad smell.’

  ‘I’m heading out, but I’ll have my phone with me so you can ring if there’s any more butler tasks you want me to complete,’ Brian said sarcastically.

  ‘Thanks, kid,’ Mucky said, turning back to the TV.

  Brian went round the back of the house and checked his bike. Chris had done a good job fixing it up in the ten
minutes he’d had to spare before the Adamus’ oh-so-important family night. Brian didn’t acknowledge it, but he was a bit jealous. He was never involved in any family nights. He barely even had a family.

  Since his mother had left, his father had had a few girlfriends. Most of them got tired of Mucky after a week or two; unless you enjoyed spending sixteen hours a day watching television, Mucky McDonnell wasn’t exactly the greatest companion in the world. The only one who had lasted longer than Sharon – a whole six months so far – had been Marjorie. She’d been nice. Dad had started cooking when he was going out with her, and he’d even showered and shaved every single day. He’d been working at the time, but then he’d fallen out with his boss and quit his job in a temper. A couple of weeks after that, Marjorie had left. She’d kept in touch with Brian for a while, meeting up with him for hot chocolate and a chat once or twice a week, checking that his clothes were clean and that he’d done his homework. It was a pain, but a nice pain. Then she’d got a job in Kanturk and now they didn’t see each other any more.

  The thing he didn’t like to admit about Sharon was that she seemed to have a lot more in common with his dad than Marjorie had. They had the same – terrible – sense of humour, they both loved the cinema of Jason Statham and they spent hours singing along to the 1980s rock music that Mucky played at ear-splitting volume. Sometimes, Brian thought there was another side to Sharon – he’d heard her answering some of the really tough questions on University Challenge once when she didn’t realize he was listening – but he was probably being paranoid. He just didn’t like her. He had to accept she was in his dad’s life now and that Marjorie wasn’t coming back. Things never stayed good for very long. They always changed.

  He didn’t like thinking about stuff like that, so he decided to go for a cycle. Life was always better when he was on his bike. His phone beeped with an incoming text.

  The message was from Chris: