The Ghost Behind the Wall

by Melvin Burgess

  “Shut up.”

  The next day there was a note through the door, thanking them for the meal and asking if David would like to stop by for a chat sometimes.

  “You can stop by for some chores sometimes, more like,” said his dad.

  “Okay,” said David.

  11

  Friends

  Over the next few weeks, nearly all of David’s spare time was used up. Every Wednesday after school he had to go to see the child psychologist. Every Friday, Alison Grey, the social worker, came to see him. Things got better at school, because the teachers found out what had happened at home and started to watch out for the bullying. With all that attention, David began to feel a lot better about life. There were still the police hanging over the whole thing, though.

  And the ghost. Was he still there, hiding behind the walls? After he had been caught, David had heard the ghost weeping a couple of times. Other times, he could sense him waiting for him to come and speak to him. He’d tried to ignore it, but in the end he’d had to go and talk to him. That was the conversation Terry had heard him have. The ghost had been trying to get him back to the old man’s apartment.

  “I told you, I don’t want to,” David had said.

  The ghost had said that David used to like going in there with him.

  “Not anymore,” David had said.

  The ghost said that unless David came with him, he’d do something really bad.

  “I bet you can’t do it on your own,” David had said.

  The ghost had said, “I’ll kill him. Or I’ll kill you.”

  “Don’t talk like that!” David had said.

  “You’ve got to come,” the ghost had said.

  “You can’t make me. Just leave him alone!” David had said.

  David was terrified that the ghost really would hurt poor old Mr. Alveston. Maybe he really could kill him. And what would happen to David then?

  In the end, the problem was solved for him. A couple of days later he came home from school and found a workman on a ladder in the front room plastering over where the duct had been. The opening had been bricked up, and so had the one in his bedroom. Later on, he discovered that the openings into Mr. Alveston’s apartment had been blocked up, too.

  David wondered what it would be like in there for the ghost now. Was he trapped in there forever? He wasn’t sure that bricks and plaster were enough to keep a ghost away if it wanted to come in, but that night, and the night after that, and the night after that, the soft weeping and breathy voice of the ghost didn’t disturb his sleep. David began to hope that the ghost was out of his life for good.

  Two or three times a week he went to see old Mr. Alveston, to do some vacuuming or shopping or to make him a cup of tea. His dad made it clear he had to, but in fact he quite enjoyed it. You never knew what Mr. Alveston was going to be like. He had lived such an impossibly long time, he was full of stories and ideas. You never knew whether he was going to be boring, fascinating, quiet, clever, or just plain nuts.

  Once he was making a fish cake for his supper, and he did it with flour, sugar, currants, and chopped lemon peel with a couple of tins of sardines stirred in.

  David was mesmerized. He’d never heard of anything like it. Mr. Alveston smiled reassuringly at him as he stirred in the sardines, and David smiled back in wonder. Perhaps this was something they used to do years and years ago. It wasn’t until the cake was done and in the oven baking away that Mr. Alveston realized what he’d done.

  “What’s that funny smell?” he asked. “It smells like someone’s put fish in a fruit cake.”

  “Well, we just did!” said David, and he began howling with laughter. But poor Mr. Alveston looked so sad, he had to stop. That was the first time he realized what everyone meant when they said that Mr. Alveston was getting a bit strange.

  “Another lapse,” he said, throwing the cake in the trash. “Oh, well, one of us enjoyed it, David.”

  Other times weren’t so much fun. He once found Mr. Alveston opening all the jars in his cupboard, looking for something he’d lost. What it was that was lost, he couldn’t make out. David helped him look, even though the old man was calling him Simon. Mr. Alveston was scraping out the marmalade with his fingers, shaking tea and coffee onto the floor, and then combing through the mess with his fingers. His eyes had gone shiny and starey.

  David helped for a bit, then he excused himself and went to get his dad. Terry gently helped Mr. Alveston up and got him cleaned up, but it upset David terribly to see the old man in such a state, not knowing who or where he was or what was going on around him. The next day, he was back to normal.

  “I’m as bad as your ghost,” he said sadly when David told him what had happened. It was becoming obvious to everyone, even him, that he couldn’t stay living on his own for much longer.

  They often talked about the ghost. Mr. Alveston had stories of his own. There was one from the time he’d lived in a house in Sydney, Australia, where something pale started to go for a walk across the hall of his house every evening at eight.

  “It came out of the wall on one side, crossed the hallway, and then went straight through the wall at the other side, every single night for a week,” he said. “In the end we found out that another house stood on the same spot long ago, so I suppose the ghost was still following where the hallway of the old one used to be.”

  He had another story about a dog that used to bark at something in the corner when there was no one there, and another when he was wandering in a garden late at night when something grabbed his ankle.

  “But when I put my hand down to my foot, there was nothing there,” he said. He had to stand there for about ten or twenty seconds before whatever it was let him go, with no harm done.

  “That’s one thing about ghosts; they never seem to hurt anyone,” he pointed out.

  But even he, long though he had lived, had no stories to match David’s. A ghost that talked, a ghost that smashed the place to bits, a ghost that had a face. Who had ever heard of such a thing?

  David had no idea how much of his own story Mr. Alveston believed, but, kind old gent that he was, he had more than forgiven David; he liked him. He put in a word with the police. He pointed out that David came to visit him often, helped with his shopping and other chores. The police decided not to take it any further. They let David off with a warning. Everything was going so well, and then came the phone call.

  * * *

  It was seven o’clock Wednesday evening when the call came. Terry and David were having their dinner. David knew at once that something was wrong. Then his dad dropped the phone and made long steps to the door.

  “What is it?” he begged.

  “Mr. Alveston—he’s taken a fall.”

  Father and son raced up the stairs. The door was locked; they could hear the old man crying weakly on the other side. Terry had the key in his pocket—Mr. Alveston had given him one for just such a time as this—and opened the door swiftly.

  It was a disaster. The place had been trashed.

  They found Mr. Alveston lying on the floor in the kitchen; his skin looked like ash and there was blood on his face and hands. He was shaking. He wept with pain when Terry helped him to a chair in the living room. The apartment had been destroyed. There wasn’t a picture left on the wall, not a book left in the cases, not an ornament or vase in one piece. Even the furniture had been wrecked. There was barely a stick left in one piece. The floor was covered in broken china and glass, the drawers emptied, the stove hissing gas. Terry sniffed the air and hurriedly turned it off. The table was overturned, the fridge lay on its side. David understood two things at once. One, the ghost was back. Two, he was going to get the blame.

  “It wasn’t me,” he said to his dad.

  “It wasn’t him,” agreed the old man.

  Terry was already on the phone calling for an ambulance. “Do you know that for sure?” he asked over his shoulder.

  “Yes, I’m certain the boy who did it was still
here when I came in,” said Mr. Alveston.

  Terry turned back to the phone, called the ambulance, and, with a funny glance at his son, the police. While he was busy, Mr. Alveston called David over. He gripped the boy by his shoulder and stared wildly at him.

  “I saw him—your ghost. He came in here like the Furies! I thought he was going to kill me, David.”

  “Thank you—thank you,” said David. He was so relieved, and so shocked at the same time. He put his arms carefully around Mr. Alveston, squeezed as hard as he dared, and began to cry.

  12

  The Closed Door

  “The dirty, cunning little sneak. What a toad! Coming in and making himself at home. Being friendly. Being nice. Getting himself off the hook. Oh, what a little angel! And then as soon as everything’s sorted out, in he comes with his horrible vandal friends and wrecks the whole place. It’s disgusting. He ought to be locked away!”

  Sis Parkinson and Alison Grey were standing in the ruins of Mr. Alveston’s apartment. Neither of them had ever seen such a mess.

  “You don’t think Mr. Alveston could have done it himself, do you?” said Alison Grey weakly. “They do sometimes, you know.” She’d grown to like David over the past few weeks. She’d thought he was friends with the old man. It was a terrible shock to her faith in human nature to think that the boy had come in and done something like this.

  Sis had tears in her eyes. “How could he?” she demanded.

  The furniture was upended. A leg had been torn off the coffee table and stabbed through the TV screen. A metal desk lamp had been bent almost double. Drawers had been wrenched out and flung all over, their contents scattered like rubbish. It looked as though some terrible force of nature, the kind of thing you found in deserts or ravines or in the ocean depths, had let itself loose in there. How could an old man nearly one hundred years old have done anything like it?

  “If Mr. Alveston did it, he must have some sort of potion he takes when he wants to rip furniture to pieces. I wish I had some of it, that’s all,” said Sis.

  Alison winced. David had seemed a nice boy! “But could a child of twelve do it, either? Look at this!” She picked up the table lamp and tried to straighten it over her knee. It didn’t budge. “I can’t do it, let alone a child.”

  Carelessly, Sis took the lamp from Alison and twisted it back into shape with one jerk of her hands.

  “He had an accomplice,” she said. “A bigger boy. A teenager! That must be the lad Mr. Alveston saw.”

  “But he was doing so well! Everyone said so. At school. At home. His father…”

  “That wimp!”

  “The reports from the child psychologist were super.”

  “Psychologists! Excuse me, I’ve nothing against social services, Alison, but what that lad wants isn’t the chance to sit down and talk about himself for hours on end, but a good hard slipper across his backside, that’s what he wants.”

  The doorbell rang. Alison picked her way across the debris while Sis began sorting out books from the rubbish.

  It was David and his dad.

  Sis heard their voices and came storming over. “You!” she yelled. “Worming your way into his affections and now you’ve come back for more? Get out!”

  “Mr. Alveston has asked David…,” began Terry.

  “I won’t have it!” bawled Sis. Once again she began making bizarre strokes in the air in her desire to get her hands on David and tear him to pieces.

  “… asked David to bring him a photograph album from the apartment,” finished Terry firmly.

  “If you think that child is setting a foot in here…”

  “It’s all right, Sis, calm down,” said Alison.

  “I’m not a social worker; I don’t have to just stand by and watch while this horrible little psychopath tries to ruin a decent old man’s life by—”

  “It’s all right, Sis, I’ll handle it.” Alison turned to Terry. “I’m afraid I can’t let you take anything away, not without written permission.”

  “He told me to,” said David.

  Terry nodded. “He asked him. He wants to look at something.”

  Alison sighed. She was aware of Sis glowering behind her like the Third Reich. “I’m sorry, you can’t take anything. I’ll tell you what I will do, though. Tell me what it is you want and I’ll give it to Mr. Alveston.” She raised her voice for Sis’s benefit. “If he wants to show it to you, then that’s up to him, I guess.”

  “He shouldn’t be allowed in the hospital,” hissed Sis. “He should be IN PRISON. With the other CRIMINALS!”

  David felt like hiding behind his dad, but he stood his ground and explained that it was a photograph album, about eight and a half by eleven, with a faded red cover. Then he made a run for it.

  Terry lingered. “David said he didn’t do it, and I believe him,” he said defiantly. “He likes the old man.”

  “You’ll believe bloody anything, then,” said Sis. “If he didn’t do it himself, he knows who did. You’re not trying to tell me it’s a coincidence, are you? You’re not going to tell me that a completely separate bunch of thugs ended up in the very same apartment and wrecked it just by chance, are you? Because if you are, you must be even more stupid than you look.” She turned away and lifted a tangled mass of smashed picture frame and glass in the air.

  Terry shrugged. “It wasn’t David,” he said again. Then he beat it, too. All he knew was David said he hadn’t done it, and Mr. Alveston said David hadn’t done it, and this wasn’t the time to disbelieve either of them. But he wasn’t entirely sure he believed them, either.

  * * *

  Mr. Alveston hadn’t suffered any serious injuries. There were no broken bones or anything like that. He was badly shaken up and bruised, but nothing worse, and it looked as though he’d be back and up on his feet in a week or so. But it didn’t work out like that.

  Overnight, he developed a lung infection. It all happened so fast. By the next day he had full-blown pneumonia. Suddenly it was in the cards that he might not survive to the end of the week.

  David couldn’t believe it. When he’d visited him the day after he went into the hospital, Mr. Alveston had been pale, but he didn’t look all that ill. David had brought grapes and large-print books to read from the library—Mr. Alveston had trouble with small print. They’d had a lively conversation about the ghost boy and what he’d done, and what it all meant. Mr. Alveston was certain he knew the ghost—or used to—but he couldn’t for the life of him remember who it was.

  “I did know, I’m sure of it. That face used to be as familiar to me as my own. But it’s gone—completely gone! Now isn’t that strange?”

  That’s when the old man had asked David to fetch the photo album from his apartment. He was certain that there was a picture of the boy in there. Maybe there’d even be a name. But when David came back the next day to see if Alison had delivered the album, Mr. Alveston was so ill, he wasn’t allowed in to see him.

  At first, no one would tell him what was going on. David had to get his dad to call. Mr. Alveston was in intensive care.

  “Pneumonia is very serious when you get that old. He might not make it,” said Terry. “There’s nothing we can do.”

  As if that wasn’t bad enough, the police were back on David’s doorstep. This time the problem was far more serious. It was a policewoman this time—much nicer than the last one, or so she seemed. She wanted to know where David had been when the apartment was being wrecked.

  “He was at home with me when we got the call,” said Terry quickly.

  “I didn’t do it this time,” insisted David. “Mr. Alveston’s told you that, hasn’t he? He saw someone else.”

  “Yes, he has told us that; we know there was another boy in there. But we don’t know whether he was alone or not, David. Judging by the mess in there, it looks as though there was more than one person.”

  So that was it! They thought David had been there too, hiding.

  “The door was locked,” went o
n the policewoman. “The ducts in there are blocked up. Whoever did it must have locked the door from the outside after they’d finished it. We know there’s a key been kept here with your dad, David. Do you know anyone else who has a key?”

  David licked his lips. “I don’t know,” he said. And he could see right then that no one was going to believe him.

  “Think,” said the policewoman coolly.

  But what could he say? He couldn’t explain about the ghost. Who on earth would believe that? This time, it was all so much worse. As the policewoman pointed out, the old man might die as a result of his fall. There was a word for this crime. The word was manslaughter. It was just a couple of steps down from murder.

  David spent the next week in a state of shock. So did Terry. He was used to David being in trouble, but this was different. He spoke to the police and to Alison Grey. Alison was reassuring.

  “Mr. Alveston said he saw someone and it wasn’t David,” she said. “The police have taken fingerprints and searched the apartment. If David’s telling the truth, he has nothing to worry about. But it would help if they could catch this lad.”

  David thought there wasn’t much chance of that. It would be the first ghost to be arrested in police history. If Mr. Alveston did die, who would defend him then?

  * * *

  The week dragged on and on and on. Terry called the hospital every evening. Early in the week Mr. Alveston was in a “critical condition.” A couple of days later he was “resting comfortably,” and they thought he was going to get better, but the next night he was in a “critical condition” again and David was certain he’d never see him again. But then he was “resting,” and then he was making a “steady recovery.” Finally he had “turned the corner” and the worst was over. He was going to make it. It had been ten days since David had first visited him in the hospital before he was allowed back in to see him.

  Mr. Alveston lay on his pillows like a scrap of meat. Small though he was, he looked somehow as if his whole body was too big for him to move. Everything was so slow. When he moved his eyes to look at David, they seemed to float slowly across. He lifted his head like a tortoise. He was like something that had begun a long, long time ago and was running out of strength and time.