by Adam Slater
He slowly picked up his teaspoon and gave himself another generous spoonful of sugar as Gran made a triumphant finish to her rant.
‘Now you see why I won’t get a television! It’s bad enough having to listen to such stuff first thing in the morning without having to look at it too.’
‘Gran,’ Callum asked casually. ‘Did you hear a dog howling in the night?’
Gran frowned. ‘Did I hear what?’
‘Howling last night. Outside.’
She shrugged, still frowning. ‘I don’t think so, Callum. What makes you ask that?’
‘You talking about hearing things without seeing them.’
Gran turned away and busied herself at the sink.
‘Well I didn’t hear anything odd. There was a howling gale, certainly. And when the wind gets in under the eaves it makes some strange noises. It plays up in the empty cottages too. It’s like living in a set of pan pipes sometimes. It was probably your imagination.’
Callum sighed and turned back to his egg, but he’d lost his appetite. After the announcement on the radio, the morning didn’t feel so ordinary any more. Pushing back his chair, he pulled on his coat.
‘I’d better get going or I’ll be late,’ he said.
‘Don’t forget to put your torch in your rucksack,’ Gran reminded him.
‘Yeah.’
‘And stay on the road.’
‘OK, OK!’ Callum looked up, surprised at this sudden shower of advice. ‘Why wouldn’t I stay on the road? I’m not going to go off into those woods in the dark, that’s for sure!’
‘Best be home before it gets dark,’ Gran finished firmly. ‘Then you won’t need to worry.’
‘Howling dogs can wander about in daylight too, you know,’ replied Callum. ‘And on roads!’
Gran gave a little shrug. ‘Whatever you say, Callum. Have a good day, dear.’
*
Callum headed back up the hill through Marlock Wood. Whatever had followed him through the trees last night wasn’t there this morning. He didn’t hear or feel anything – no soft padding of feet, no icy breath of wind, and above all, no howling. Still no ghosts around Nether Marlock church either, but in daylight that didn’t seem so worrying.
Callum paused for a moment to watch a pair of chaffinches hopping about fearlessly in the briars at the bottom of the lane.
‘You’re not scared of anything, are you?’ he said under his breath. ‘I guess I shouldn’t be, either.’
Up in the town, the high street was going about its everyday morning business. Callum passed the kids in front of the post office, stocking up on sweets and crisps before the long, grinding day of schoolwork ahead. The shopkeeper only allowed two schoolchildren in at a time and kept a strict watch at the door, like a bouncer at a nightclub. There were about twenty kids standing in the queue outside, messing around and texting their friends while they waited to be allowed in. Callum nodded at a couple of kids from his class as he passed, and they nodded back.
He got along with most of his classmates just fine, even if he didn’t mix with them much. He had to keep normal kids at a distance. He’d learned that the hard way at primary school. Callum had a few friends back then, but it hadn’t been easy to hold on to them when they kept catching him staring at things they couldn’t see. One day, whispers started going round the playground and Callum found himself spending break time alone.
In the hallways of Marlock High School, all the talk was about the latest teenage murder victim. Callum shoved his rugby boots into his locker and pulled out his maths books as the gossip echoed around him.
‘It’s got to be something to do with vampires!’ said one girl.
Someone laughed. ‘Don’t be stupid. We’re not in a movie!’
‘Honest. They said there was writing in blood.’
‘Or maybe it’s gangsters,’ said another voice. ‘A drug ring, taking revenge . . .’
The laughing girl put on a ghoulish voice: ‘Where will they strike next?’ Her friends broke into nervous giggles.
Callum banged his locker shut.
Hugh Mayes, a boy from Callum’s class, gave his own locker door a sympathetic slam. ‘Girls, eh?’
‘Too daft,’ Callum agreed. Gran was right about the media, stirring up rumours and panic.
The morning passed even more slowly than usual. Callum almost dozed off in maths and geography after the horror-filled race in his dream and the sleepless night that had followed, but Hugh and his mate Andrew kept giving him helpful pokes in the ribs with their pencils. He managed not to fall asleep over his books, but he was feeling pretty exhausted by lunchtime.
Callum dumped his books in his locker again after his final class of the morning and headed to lunch. The stairwell outside the cafeteria was crowded as usual. One girl, coming down the stairs towards Callum, was dressed in flowing Victorian mourning clothes, her long black skirt glittering with sequins.
Callum had just stepped aside to let the ghost float past when he realised that it wasn’t a ghost at all, just that ridiculous New Age girl, Melissa Roper, her black school uniform accessorised with tasselled Indian silk scarves and assorted healing crystals. Other girls wore foundation and eye-shadow; Melissa tattooed the backs of her hands with henna. Today she had on a jingling collection of shiny crucifixes on a silver chain. Protection against Dracula?
Callum grinned in spite of himself. Of course – it was her voice he’d heard that morning by his locker, suggesting that the serial murders were done by vampires. Trust Melissa. His grin faded, though, as she met his eye and smiled back shyly. Melissa, with her alternative dress sense and her goofy ideas, hadn’t learned the art of keeping her head down. She attracted attention – the sort of attention Callum worked hard to avoid. He felt a bit sorry for her, but not enough to want to talk to her. With a half-hearted wave, he turned to head into the cafeteria.
‘Hey, wait, Callum!’
Callum groaned inwardly. It didn’t look like he had much choice now.
‘You were there when Chloe was going on about those murders being done by a drug ring, weren’t you?’ Melissa asked, stopping halfway down the stairs as a boy pushed his way past her. ‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t know,’ Callum answered shortly. He didn’t have time for Melissa’s latest conspiracy theory. He was hungry, and the tips of his fingers were tingling annoyingly, as though his hands had fallen asleep.
‘It’s scary, though,’ Melissa said.
‘They’re telling people not to panic.’
Melissa looked down at Callum and rolled her eyes. ‘Of course that’s what they tell you!’
The rush of kids finally stopped. There were just a few people still queuing for lunch, and now Melissa was the only person on the stairs. Except for that idiot Ed Bolton, crouched behind the railing at the top . . .
Callum looked up. From where he was standing, his view of the landing was obscured. What made him think Ed was there?
The tingling in his hands was worse now, real pins and needles, and suddenly he could see Ed quite clearly, as if he was standing right next to him. The older boy was crouched behind the railing at the top of the stairs, with a squeezy dispenser of tomato sauce from the cafeteria. He was dripping ketchup in a steady stream over the railing, waiting for Melissa to walk beneath it.
Callum looked back at Melissa, but she was no longer standing on the stairs. She was stepping towards him . . . Stepping into a puddle of ketchup on one of the stairs. Slipping . . . Her foot sliding out from under her . . . Falling . . . Her head cracking against a concrete stair . . . Sliding . . . Until her body lay at the bottom of the stairwell in a limp tangle of silk, her head twisted at an unnatural angle, her eyes glassy and dead . . . And a dark pool of blood spreading out from her shattered skull . . .
Then, as quickly as it had come, the tingling in his hands was gone.
Callum blinked, and there was Melissa, perfectly upright and unhurt, coming down the stairs. He shook his head. What he had seen
hadn’t been real. It couldn’t have been.
But the red puddle at Melissa’s feet was.
She was stepping towards it.
It was ketchup.
A blob of sauce hit Melissa on the cheek and she looked up, frowning, one foot hovering over the treacherous concrete step where the slippery pool waited.
Callum didn’t hesitate. Leaping forward, he grabbed Melissa and yanked her towards him, so that she fell on to him instead of backwards on to the hard steps.
Melissa fell heavily, taking Callum down with her. They both collapsed in a heap at the bottom of the stairs in the sloppy mess of spilled tomato sauce. One of the boys in the lunch queue gave a whoop of delight.
‘Roper and Scott! Woo-hoo!’
A couple of other boys laughed as Melissa untangled herself from Callum and wiped ketchup from her face, blinking and confused.
But she was alive. Callum closed his eyes. For a split-second he saw the vision again – Melissa lying on the stairs with her skull split wide open. When he opened his eyes, the scene vanished.
Callum’s head reeled. But it wasn’t just the thought of what had almost taken place that sent his heart racing, it was what he had done. He had seen it coming. He had stopped it happening.
Chapter 6
‘What the devil is going on here?’
It was Mr Gower, the deputy headmaster, his shining bald head red with outrage.
Melissa gave a wail as she realised she was covered with tomato sauce. She looked up to see where the drips were coming from and pointed. ‘Someone’s pouring ketchup down the stairs!’
‘It’s Ed Bolton,’ Callum burst out, before the bully had a chance to flee the scene. No one could see him from down here, but Callum was so certain it was Ed that he didn’t even think about the consequences of naming names.
‘Bolton!’ roared the deputy head. ‘Get down here!’
Ed came skulking down the stairs. He gave Melissa a smirking, disdainful glance as he carefully skirted the mess of sauce on the steps, and shot Callum a meaningful look of warning. Finally he stood scowling before Mr Gower.
‘This isn’t a circus,’ Mr Gower snapped over his shoulder at the gathering bunch of onlookers. ‘Get to your class. Get to lunch. Get out of here. Not you, Scott, you seem to know it all. What happened here?’
Callum swallowed. Anything he said now would make a mortal enemy of Ed.
‘I think it was an accident . . .’ Callum began. Then, disgusted at his own cowardice, he straightened his shoulders. Ed was less frightening than the thing in the woods; Ed was something Callum knew how to fight, if he had to.
‘No, I’m sorry, it wasn’t,’ Callum said boldly. ‘Melissa was talking about vampires this morning, and Ed thought he’d tease her by dripping ketchup on her head. But I saw -’
Callum pulled himself up short. He couldn’t tell Mr Gower what he’d seen; he didn’t even properly understand how he had seen it. And if he said anything about his vision of Melissa lying dead, they’d all think he was deranged.
‘I saw that there was sauce on the stairs and Melissa was about to slip,’ he continued. ‘So I pulled her away from it, but we lost our balance and fell over.’
Mr Gower nodded. He glared at Ed.
‘I’ve just about had it up to my eyeballs with your pranks, Bolton. Detention slips again, is it? But first, you’ve got a mess to clean up. Come to the caretaker’s office and help yourself to a mop.’ He pointed down the hall. ‘Get on with it, Bolton.’
Ed threw Callum a look of pure hatred and marched off with the deputy head, leaving Callum and Melissa alone in the hall.
‘Are you all right?’ Callum asked awkwardly.
Melissa wiped her face with her spangled scarf.
‘I’m OK. Thanks. Thanks for helping.’
‘Do you need to get cleaned up?’
Melissa shook her head. ‘This scarf only cost ninety pence at Shaman’s – I’ll just bin it. I’m going to lunch. If I go up to the girls’ toilets I’ll have to pass Ed cleaning the floor on my way back down.’
Callum could see why Melissa might not want to risk that.
‘All right.’
Callum followed Melissa into the cafeteria and they picked up their lunch trays without speaking. He was still shocked by what had happened. He had seen the future. He had changed the future.
There were two empty seats at the end of a table, so they sat down together.
‘Cheer up,’ Melissa said. ‘At least you didn’t get sauced.’
Callum couldn’t help smiling.
‘Ed’s a bully,’ he said. ‘Don’t take it personally. He’s always looking for an excuse to make people look stupid.’
‘Oh, I know. He’s picked on me before. But not . . . not physically, you know?’
Callum realised suddenly that having their clothes ruined and being made to look stupid in front of half the school would have reduced a lot of other girls to tears. But Melissa just seemed resigned to it.
‘Yeah, he picks on me too,’ Callum told her sympathetically, poking at his mushy peas with his fork. ‘Anyone who’s not popular.’
‘You!’ said Melissa. ‘What do you mean? Everybody likes you.’
Callum glanced up at her in surprise.
‘Well, they do,’ she said. ‘You’re good at sport. You don’t talk much, but people like you. You’re not a swot, you don’t try to get in with the teachers, but you don’t mess about either. Like today – you knew Ed was responsible and you weren’t afraid to say so.’
Callum was astonished. Of course, you had to filter this news through Channel Melissa, but it had never occurred to him that popular kids like Hugh and Andrew spoke to him in the hall and helped him keep his eyes open in class because they liked him.
Melissa frowned a little, stabbing at her own plate. ‘I hope he doesn’t try and get back at you. How did you know it was him, anyway?’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘When you told Gower it was Ed dripping the ketchup, how did you know it was him?’
Callum bit his tongue.
‘I just saw him, that’s all.’
Melissa put down her fork.
‘C’mon, you were standing in front of me, Callum. I was coming down the stairs, I could see the rail at the top, but I didn’t notice Ed. You were standing at the bottom of the stairs, under the landing. You couldn’t have seen him at all. How did you really know?’
‘Must have been a lucky guess,’ Callum countered evasively. He certainly wasn’t going to tell her about his vision. ‘You know Ed. If someone’s dripping ketchup down the stairs, it’s probably him.’
Melissa’s brow furrowed, as if she was puzzling out something that didn’t make sense.
‘Yes, but when you pulled me out of the way, it was as though you knew something terrible was going to happen to me. Not like I was just going to get ketchup in my hair.’
‘Look, anyone could see you might have slipped,’ said Callum defensively. ‘I didn’t know anything. How could I?’ He stirred the green paste on his plate for emphasis.
‘Yes, but -’
‘Look, I’ve got to go,’ said Callum abruptly, standing up and picking up his tray. He’d been here before – people noticing the strange things he could do. It always meant trouble. ‘I’ll see you later, OK.’
Callum didn’t wait for a reply, but turned and headed out of the cafeteria. It wasn’t just that Melissa’s questions were getting a little too pointed. The truth was, even he didn’t know the answers. It was more than luck; more even than his own special kind of Luck.
How had he known?
*
Ed was in both of his afternoon classes, so Callum spent the rest of the day slinking in and out of lessons at the last possible second, desperately trying to avoid an encounter. He had rugby practice after school, but luckily it lasted longer than Ed’s detention, so the bully was long gone before he had finished. Still, he didn’t want to chance it.
‘Aren’t you ch
anging out of your kit?’ asked Owen, the team captain, as Callum picked up his rucksack. ‘You look like you’ve been mud wrestling.’
‘I want to get home before dark,’ Callum said.
‘Can’t say I blame you. Who’d want to walk through Marlock Wood at night!’
Though it wasn’t exactly dark yet, the day was so overcast that twilight seemed to fall an hour earlier than usual. Marlock High Street was jammed with slow-moving traffic as commuters made their way home, and the shops were beginning to shut. The town’s pavements were thick with the spirits of the dead.
Callum didn’t think he’d ever seen so many ghosts in one place. Forgotten villagers from Marlock’s thousand years of history lurked in doorways like gossiping smokers. Although he’d seen a few of them before, there seemed to be dozens of new ones – new to Callum, at least. As he waited to cross the road, the ghost of a wartime pilot, still in his smart blue uniform, stepped out in front of him. The spectral figure climbed up into an invisible bus and disappeared. A dead woman lay face down in the middle of the pavement, her long skirts flapping in a chill breeze only Callum seemed to feel. Another slumped against a post box, staring blankly at the sky and beckoning to someone invisible. It was like walking through a war zone that only he could see – normal passers-by hurried among the ghosts, oblivious to their presence.
Callum hunched his shoulders against the cold. Weren’t ghosts supposed to haunt the places where they died? How could so many people have died in Marlock High Street? Or were they coming from somewhere else?
And how come, thought Callum bitterly as he reached the estate at the edge of town and turned on to the road that led down to Marlock Wood, how come with all these ghosts, I don’t just once see my own mum?
‘Hey, it’s Scott! Look, it’s Callum Scott! Been rolling in mud again, Scott?’
Ed and his gang were crouched under the wooden fort in the toddlers’ play park at the edge of the estate, trying to keep their cigarettes out of the wind. Callum cursed himself. He’d been so distracted by the hordes of ghosts in town he’d forgotten that Ed lived around here.
He’d been lying in wait for him.
