by John Larkin
> IT JUST SO HAPPENS THAT BREAKFAST COMES UNDER THE HEADING OF ‘SO FORTH’.
‘Ohh.’
> SO YOU’LL LET ME DO IT THEN?
‘What! Take over my body? You must be joking. Get a life, Nick.’ Brendan winced as soon as he’d said it. He’d just bet that with the possible exception of ‘Right, I’m going to get a priest’, this was probably the worst insult you could fire at a ghost.
> I’LL CHOOSE TO IGNORE THAT REMARK.
‘You can’t be serious, though. The only person I’m interested in giving up my body to is Helen Wong.’ Unfortunately, though, it was looking more and more unlikely that she’d accept this generous offer.
> I TOLD YOU, STICK WITH ME AND I’LL HELP SORT THINGS OUT FOR YOU BABEWISE AS YOU MIGHT SAY.
Brendan was torn. He’d have given just about anything to hold Helen’s hand and gaze into her gorgeous brown eyes again. Although he had to admit that giving up his body to a ghost would probably be high on the list of things he wouldn’t do. But in the absence of such a list he relented. ‘What have I got to do?’
> LIE ON THE BED AND RELAX YOUR BODY.
‘This better work, Nick, and you better help me get back with Helen. She was the first person that I’d hoped to hear that sentence from.’
> YOU MIGHT FEEL A TINGLING SENSATION AS I GET INSIDE YOU.
How low can a guy stoop! thought Brendan.
> BUT YOU MUSTN’T FIGHT IT. JUST KEEP RELAXING.
‘Fifteen minutes, that’s all you’re getting. Is it a deal?’
> DEAL.
‘Where will I be when you take me over?’
> YOU’LL STILL BE IN YOUR BODY, BUT YOU WON’T HAVE ANY CONTROL.
‘Sounds like Blow-wave at the Wongs’ Christmas dinner.’
> WHAT?
‘Nothing. Carry on!’
Brendan went and lay down on his bed and tried to relax. He had a horrible thought. What if this was some sort of long running ultra-techno gag that Brains was playing on him through a modem connected to his computer?
He sat up and glanced at his monitor. ‘Michelle Pender looks like the east end of a west-bound pig!’
> WHAT? WILL YOU TRY AND RELAX!
At least that ruled out Brains. ‘Just checking something.’
Brendan had begun to relax enough to feel a tingling sensation in his feet when his bedroom door flew open.
‘C’mon, Brendan! Breakfast’s ready,’ said his mother as he quickly drew his doona up around him. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Err, I’m just being possessed by a ghost.’
‘Well hurry up! Your bacon and eggs’ll get cold.’ She turned around and walked off, muttering something about it being the worst excuse she’d ever heard and that maybe he should leave it alone for a while or he’d go blind.
Chapter 13
‘Nice of you to join me,’ said Brendan’s mother as she poured the tea. ‘You’ll end up with one arm stronger than the other.’
Nick obviously didn’t understand what she was going on about, but Brendan did. And he was totally innocent this time.
‘Err, could you pass me the toast please, Mother?’ said Nick through Brendan’s vocal chords.
Mother! thought Brendan. Who on earth called their mother ‘Mother’?
‘What’s with the formality? What happend to “chuck us over some burnt bread”?’ she replied.
Don’t say it! thought Brendan, trying to get a message through to Nick.
‘Err, chuck us over some burnt bread!’
Groan.
‘Don’t be so lazy! Get it yourself!’
During breakfast Nick devoured so many slices of bacon that Brendan felt the first thing he should do when he got control of his body again was race down to the doctor’s and get his cholesterol level checked.
When Nick had finally finished eating, he let out a long loud satisfying burp that shook the table.
‘Don’t be such a pig, Brendan.’
‘In some countries it’s considered polite to belch after an enjoyable meal.’
‘Yes, and in some provinces of France it’s no doubt considered good manners to fart in the spa bath after a pleasant glass of champagne. But not in this house.’
Groan.
‘My apologies.’ He then got up, left the table and turned down the hall towards Brendan’s room. Halfway down the hall he stopped, turned around, walked through the laundry and out into the backyard.
What’s he doing? But it was to no avail. Although Brendan could hear Nick when he spoke, Nick quite clearly could not hear Brendan’s thoughts. He was simply along for the ride.
Through his own eyes Brendan saw himself get his surfboard out from under the house, charge down the path and out onto the beach.
‘I’ve always wanted to try this, Brendan. Just five minutes, then I’ll give you your body back.’
He’s nicked my body, thought Brendan. If Nick killed him, Brendan would come back and haunt him.
This was hopeless—how could you haunt a ghost? But death was certainly on Brendan’s mind. He could see that the waves were seriously pounding—there was no way he’d have gone out in that if he’d had a choice.
But he didn’t.
Nick went charging into the surf, climbed onto the board and paddled Brendan’s body out to the break. Then he turned round to face the beach and was immediately crash tackled by a seething wall of wet death.
The huge wash created by the wave dragged Brendan’s body down to the bottom. He could feel his teeth being scraped along the sand about two metres down. After what seemed like an eternity, Nick finally struggled to the surface and sucked some much needed air into Brendan’s lungs.
Luckily Nick had attached the leg rope, and although Brendan could plough his body through the water like a Polaris missile, the best Nick could manage with it was a sort of amputee dog paddle. Eventually, after thrashing the water to a frenzied foam, Nick pulled Brendan’s body back onto the board just in time to be hit full in the face by the previous wave’s big brother.
For the next ten minutes Brendan’s body was tossed around like a cork as he was hit with wave after wave.
Fortunately one wave was so powerful that it carried him all the way in and tossed him onto the sand.
Nick got Brendan to his feet, shook his hair, turned round and was met by Brains and Zervoid, who had watched the whole performance.
Oh no! Nick wouldn’t have a clue who they were.
‘Brendan?’ said a slightly confused Brains.
‘Oh. Err, hi chaps.’
Groan.
‘Hi chaps?’ said Zervoid. ‘Are you okay, Brendan?’
‘I told you he was losing it,’ said Brains quietly to Zervoid.
‘That, err,’ said Nick, trying to think of something that Brendan might say, ‘was a rad set of barrels.’
Groan.
‘A rad set of barrels?’ said Zervoid. ‘That was the worst exhibition of surfing I’ve ever seen. A blind leper could surf a tidal wave better than that.’
‘Well, I’m a bit out of practice what with me spending so much time going round to Helen Wong’s place at night and looking in her window.’
Ultra groan.
‘You need help!’ said Brains. ‘You are seriously losing it.’
‘I’m fine. In fact I’m totally rad.’
‘Well, if you are so totally rad, why are you surfing in your pyjamas?’ said Zervoid.
Nick looked down at Brendan’s Fred Flintstone boxer shorts and matching top. ‘Err, because my wetsuit’s in the wash.’ He picked up the two halves of Brendan’s surfboard and ran up to the house. ‘See you later, chaps.’
Five minutes later Brendan opened his eyes and looked over at his monitor. It was dead. After hopping out of Brendan’s body, Nick was clearly keeping a low profile.
The rest of the house was dead too. His mother had obviously gone out shopping or something.
Brendan jumped out of bed and tore off his pyjamas. He raced into the bathroo
m and towelled himself off. A huge glass of water and some heavy work with his toothbrush was needed to wash all the sand out of his mouth.
Minutes later Brendan took a few deep breaths and tried to devise an action plan. Nick was history for sure. He’d almost killed him. He’d broken his favourite surfboard. He’d made him eat about a tonne of sand and wash it down with a couple of gallons of salt water. Chaps! A rad set of barrels! Surfing in his PJs! Perving in Helen’s window! He’d never stoop that low.
On top of that gargantuan list, his two best mates now thought he was insane. Well, maybe he was, but one thing was certain: real or not, Nick was trouble with a capital ‘T’ and Brendan was going to get rid of him.
Brendan ducked down under his desk and ripped the power sockets out of the wall. He then picked up his monitor, went out to the backyard and threw it in the bin. He came back and did the same with his computer and keyboard.
And with the electronic exorcism performed, Brendan slammed his bedroom door shut and crawled into bed. It was only about eleven o’clock but, as far as he was concerned, the weekend was over.
Chapter 14
Brendan etched his way slowly along the corridor looking for his History teacher’s office. Earlier in the day he’d tried to explain away Saturday’s aberration to Brains and Zervoid, but they weren’t having it. They were good mates—the best in fact—and they wanted to help. So they’d made an appointment for him to see the school counsellor, Ms Cunningham, straight after school.
Brains knew that Brendan had really flipped when Brendan had told him about throwing his computer in the bin.
‘Are you nuts?’ shouted Brains during a noisy moment in Maths, forgetting for the moment that he thought Brendan was. ‘That’s a top of the range 486 with a 200 megabyte hard drive and multi-media kit. Your computer is worth more than my mum’s car!’
Brendan tried to explain to Brains that his mum’s car did not have a deranged ghost in it communicating with her. Nor did it possess her body and nearly kill her. But Brains wasn’t listening. He was off on one of his techno tangents. ‘Could I come round and try and salvage your hard disc out of the bin?’
‘Forget it, Brains,’ said Brendan. ‘And besides, he lives in the wardrobe. Chucking out my computer just means he can’t communicate.’
‘But I thought you said that he could move things, like when he threw you up against the wall and that.’
‘He can but I think it’s too much effort for him. He has to conserve what bit of energy he has to operate my computer. If he went round creating cyclones in my bedroom each night, he’d simply cease to exist. He only did that to get my attention.’
Brains said that Brendan’s story was nothing if not consistent, and that maybe he’d come round that night to check things out for himself, provided Brendan went and saw Ms Cunningham first.
Even though Brendan was fairly convinced that Brains was only doing it so he could scab some computer parts, he still thought it was worth a try. If Nick dared to put in an appearance that night, it would at least prove to Brains that Brendan hadn’t totally flipped.
It was now 3.30, the school was practically deserted and the rain was teeming down. The only voices that Brendan could hear were coming from the kids in the detention class in D-block. A couple of sun-fried waxheads wandered the corridors looking for something or other. But as these were the types of guys who showed up for school at midday, left when it was dark, and spent the time in between paying homage to their god, Barton Lynch, there was not much point asking them for directions.
They staggered past Brendan and informed him that there was a bodacious set of tubes to be had at Curly. And although Brendan was looking for guidance it was of a different sort, so he chose to ignore them.
He eventually found the office he was after. It had a wooden plaque on the door that read:
Joan Cunningham BA Dip. Ed. MA (Psych.)
History Teacher, Guidance Officer
He gently tapped on the door and Ms Cunningham told him to ‘enter’.
Brendan was impressed that Ms Cunningham had her own office. Or at least he was until he got inside. It was so small that it looked more like a cupboard. She obviously stayed behind long after the other teachers had gone home, not to help the students out with their teen angst, but rather to prevent the cleaners from storing their mops in her office. If you had tried to swing a cat in there, it would have been dead with massive head injuries before you’d turned half a circle.
The office contained a chair, a desk, a bookcase and a beanbag, all of which were fighting each other for what bit of space there was.
‘Take a seat,’ said Ms Cunningham in a voice that was so calm and soothing that Brendan felt sure it would have turned Attila the Hun into a pacifist. He then wondered about what sort of parents would give their son a middle name of ‘the’. No wonder old Attila had turned out the way he had.
Seeing that she was sunk down deep into the beanbag, Brendan plonked himself down in the chair at her desk. In the dim light of the room it was hard to distinguish Ms Cunningham from the beanbag, and Brendan could have been forgiven for thinking he was alone in the room except for the fact that beanbags seldom wore glasses. The way she blended into her environment was something else. She must have been incredible at hide ‘n’ seek.
‘Your friends are worried about you, Brendan.’ Ms Cunningham got straight to the point. ‘How are things at home?’
Brendan hesitated for a bit. ‘Okay.’
‘Do you get along with your mother?’
‘Yeah, she’s cool.’
‘How about your father?’
‘He left home.’
‘Any brothers or sisters?’
‘One older brother.’
‘And do you get along with him?’
‘He left home, too.’
‘Do you have a girlfriend?’
‘I did have.’
‘What happened?’
‘She dumped me.’
‘Well, that’s quite a lot you’ve had to deal with. Is there anything else that’s bothering you?’
‘No!’
‘You sure? Nothing else you’d like to get off your chest?’
‘No!’ What was she getting at?
‘C’mon, Brendan, you can talk to me. I think we both know that you’re bottling something up.’
They’d told her, hadn’t they? Bloody Brains and Zervoid, the little do-gooders. They reckoned they were worried about him, and now they’d gone and told her everything. She probably had a straitjacket tucked under the beanbag. That’s why it was so dark in here. She must have been recording his every word. He’d be sleeping in a padded cell tonight for sure.
‘Okay!’ said Brendan, leaping to his feet. ‘I’ve got a ghost living in my wardrobe that’s communicating with me via my computer. He’s after something but he hasn’t said what. And last Saturday I let him take over my body so that he could have some breakfast, but he ended up going surfing and almost killing me. And when I got him out I threw my four thousand dollar computer in the bin so I wouldn’t have to speak to him again.’
Brendan slumped back down into the chair and breathed a huge sigh of relief. It felt quite good to have got it off his chest.
‘Actually, Brendan,’ said Ms Cunningham after a slight pause, ‘I was going to ask you if you were gay.’
Oh no! What had he said? Now she’d think he was mad as well as gay. Why not dive straight in the deep end and tell her it was a gay ghost?
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ said Ms Cunningham after a minute’s silence, in which Brendan sat trying to gather his thoughts with his head in his hands.
‘No thanks, Ms,’ Brendan was getting up to leave. ‘You’re right though. I am gay, I only told you about that ghost stuff because I was embarrassed.’
‘I bet you feel a whole lot better now that you’ve told somebody.’
‘Yes thanks, Ms. You aren’t gunna tell anybody though?’ said Brendan, practically pleading.
‘Because I think I’ll get over it.’
‘You don’t have to get over anything. Just be happy with who you are.’
Brendan closed her office door and ran down the corridor and out to the bike rack. He raced home at warp factor 8, with the rain streaming down his face. He hoped and prayed that he’d get home before the garbage collectors came.
If he could handle the school counsellor thinking he was gay, then he could certainly handle Nick, at least until Nick helped him get back with Helen and prove to the world that he wasn’t.
Chapter 15
‘What do you want?’ said Brendan, answering the front door later that evening.
Brains let himself in. ‘I told you I was gunna come round.’
‘You only want to scab some computer parts.’
‘No! I want to see if there’s something other than clothes hanging in your wardrobe.’
‘Ssssshhhhh!’ Brendan dragged Brains into his room. ‘Don’t let Mum hear you.’
‘I thought you told her.’
‘I did, but she thinks I’m loony too. And the other morning when he took over my body, she thought …’
‘What?’ said Brains.
‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘You dug it out of the bin.’ Brains sat down at Brendan’s desk and turned on his computer.
Luckily the grass clippings from the previous week’s mowing effort had cushioned the computer’s fall into the bin, and apart from a few weeds sticking out of the keyboard it appeared to be all right.
>
‘Okay.’ Brains was gazing at the monitor. ‘Where is he?’
‘Dunno. This is the first time it’s been on since I got it out of the bin.’
>
‘He might have gone,’ said Brendan. ‘I was totally pissed off with him after Saturday, so he’s probably done a bolt.’
Surprisingly Brendan found himself feeling a bit sad at the thought. Nick, on the one hand, was totally annoying but, on the other, they were supposed to have a deal.
>
‘Well then, Brendan,’ said Brains in that know-it-all tone of voice that really got up Brendan’s nose, ‘it looks like your Mr Ghost either found himself a nice warm CD player to possess, or you’ve reached the Olympic qualifying standard for bullshit.’
