by Sarah Dalton
“What seems to be the problem, officers?”
“We had an anonymous call about a domestic disturbance, ma’am. We’re here to check everything out and make sure no one is hurt.”
“From who?” Mum asks. “We don’t have any neighbours who could possibly have heard anything. Besides, there’s no disturbance to report. Unless I left the television on too loud. We’ve just moved in, you see. Without my husband around it’s a little tricky to get it working properly. I lost the remote for a while and it was stuck on some awful horror movie. Hey, maybe that was it.”
One of the officers looks up to me. She’s young, with her hair neatly tucked under her hat. She regards me up and down.
“Are you all right?” she asks.
I nod.
Her eyes narrow. “Did you call us?”
“Oh, pay no attention to her,” Mum says. “She’s always pulling this crap. Between you and me, she has psychological problems.” She cups a hand over her mouth when she says the word psychological, but I can hear her anyway. The word pierces me through the heart. Lacey moves closer. Her electricity feels comforting. “We thought she was autistic as a child, truth be told. I’m sorry she called you. I’ll make sure she doesn’t do it again.”
The male officer nods. “All right, ma’am. Just keep the television down in future. You can always change the channel and volume on the front of the set.”
Mum lets out a giggle partway between flirty and manic. The male officer takes a step back in surprise. “What an airhead I am. Of course you can.”
“Take care of your daughter,” says the other officer as they move away. “Time wasting is against the law, but under these circumstances we understand.” She smiles at me and I can’t stand it. The pity practically drips from her lips.
The door closes and Mum doesn’t move for a few moments. She cocks her head to the side, listening to the slam of the car doors, the vroom of the engine, the crunch of the gravel. Then she turns to me and rage twists her face.
“How dare you call the police, you bitch. I’m going to make you pay for that.”
Chapter Seventeen
She stands with the door behind her, straight as a pole and clenched tighter than a coiled spring. Her head is tilted down so that I see the dark lines beneath her eyes. Of all the times Mum and I have argued, I have never once been afraid of her. I’ve watched her twirl her slipper over her toes in annoyance and scratch the backs of her arms as she chastises me. I’ve seen her waggle her index finger at Dad a few times. But I’ve never seen her lose her temper. I’ve never seen the lid come off the pressure cooker like this.
When she starts towards me I run into the hall and slam my bedroom door shut. Lacey is by my side, her mouth hanging open in shock.
“Get back here! Don’t you dare run away from me. Do you know what you just did? You betrayed your own family. You called the cops on your own mother. What kind of daughter does that?” She yells expletives as she bangs the door with her fists. The blood drains from my face. I’ve never heard Mum swear so profusely before.
“Put a chair under the doorknob,” Lacey says. Her eyebrows are halfway up her forehead. She’s as shocked as I am. “I don’t know who’s possessing your mum but they sure have a potty mouth. Jesus, even I don’t say that.”
I ram a chair under the door handle and back away, wiping sweat from my forehead at the same time.
Then I turn to my friend. “She’s still in there somewhere. I keep seeing parts of her. I mean, she’s still talking as though she’s Mum, even though the things she’s saying are so… wrong.” My voice cracks. I can’t believe this is happening.
Parents are similar to the stabilisers on your bike: there when you need them to stop you falling over. But when they break, you fall down with them. Everything seems to crumble around you.
The knocking goes quiet. Through the door there’s the sound of heavy breathing. The strange, inhuman sound is worse than the banging and swearing. I step away from the door on shaking legs.
“What are we going to do?” I wring my hands together.
“You have the Athamé,” Lacey says.
“I can’t plunge it through the heart of my own mother.”
“No, but maybe you can use the circle of protection to stop her from moving.”
An uneasy breath escapes my lips. “Tha-that’s a good idea.”
The door handle rattles. Once. Twice. My nerves are on edge. My body starts at every sudden sound.
“Mary?” Mum’s voice comes through the door without the hollow edge of the spirit inside. “Mary, are you there? Open the door, love.”
“Don’t listen,” Lacey warns. “She’s trying to trick you. Don’t listen to her.”
But the voice tugs on my heart, appealing to the little girl inside me who wants nothing more than a cuddle from her Mummy. I finger the hilt of the Athamé, wondering if I can contain her until we think of a better plan. Then, as I’m considering moving the chair from the door, a soft humming seeps through the room.
“That song,” I breathe.
“Mary, don’t listen. That isn’t your mother, and it isn’t your song.”
I close my eyes and imagine Liza in this very room, sat on her bed opening the music box. I see her even smaller opening a present under the Christmas tree and gasping in delight at the sight of the small silver box. I shake my head, trying to force the images away.
“No,” I say. “You can’t fool me. You are not my mother.”
The humming halts abruptly. The air around us drops a few degrees and steam filters in from beneath the door. I glance at Lacey as every hair bristles on my body. Then the heavy breathing resumes, each breath heavier and raspier, until my mother growls outside the room. A sense of dread begins in my stomach. The growls are so loud that it’s as though Mum has pressed her body against the door. I try not to imagine her in that way, with her skin so pallid and bruised from the spirit inside. Steams snakes up into the air and swirls through the room. I lean away, suspicious and fearful. As the room fills with this steam, I find myself moving towards the window. I back up so far that my skin touches the glass. I gasp and pull away, rubbing the cold spot of skin that touched the window. I turn towards the glass and place a finger against it. It’s ice cold to the touch, and as my fingertip rests against the window, ice forms over the pane, spreading until it obscures the sight of the forest beyond the house.
The result darkens the steamy, freezing-cold room. Even my own breath exhales in a jet of steam. My teeth chatter and I hug myself, trying to force warmth into my bones.
“You will pay.”
I spin around to face the door. All traces of my mother have been stripped away from that voice. My legs shake from the cold, the bone-cold. I grab a blanket from my bed and wrap it around my shoulders.
“She tells me things. About you, about how you embarrassed the family. Do you want to know the real reason your dad lost his job?”
I shake my head. Dad used to have a well-paid job at a private school. They told him they were cutting funding in the science programme in favour of the social sciences, which had become more popular amongst the GCSE and A-Level students.
“Whatever she says, don’t listen to her. It’s all lies,” Lacey reminds me.
“I’m not lying,” Mum continues. “I’m telling the truth. Susan here is telling me with her mind.”
Lacey turns to me in shock. “Did she just—”
“I hear you.” There’s the hint of a slow, self-satisfied smile in Mum’s voice. “And I know you’re dead.”
“Yeah, well, so are you. At least I have the decency to stay dead and not try to inhabit some unsuspecting person.”
Mum laughs slowly. “You’ve got a lot to learn, spirit. You should come with me. I can teach you how to live, how to be part of the world again. How to touch, and eat, and feel. I can teach you all of those things. You would like that, wouldn’t you?”
Lacey backs away. “N-no, because I don’t hurt people
like you do.”
“Give it time,” Mum says. “Give it time.”
Lacey swallows and runs her fingers through her hair. I can tell that she’s unsettled by the things the ghost said. How tempting are the offers it promised? I understand how desperately Lacey wants to be able to experience life again, how much she longs for it. But Lacey would never hurt another person. She has a good heart, even now as a ghost. Even as a shadow of herself. She is still Lacey; she still wants to help people.
“Mary, the reason your father was fired was that they didn’t want to employ someone who couldn’t even control their own daughter.”
My stomach drops. “That’s a lie. They-They wouldn’t.”
The steam from the room dissolves away until only a few vapours remain. After the room is virtually back to normal, a frost starts to spread lightly from the doorknob, softly prickling its way to the wood.
“You have no idea how much stress your father was under, have you? Oh, I don’t miss the selfishness of teenage girls, the way you all believe that the world revolves around you. I do not miss you at all. I inhabited a teenage girl once. She was quite fun to be in because no one suspected a thing for weeks. Teenagers can act as strangely as they want and no one notices. You selfish creatures. Selfish beings. You, Mary, you wouldn’t let me in, would you? You batted me away. Your mind, always trying, always strengthening. It’s a shame your dear old daddy didn’t have some of that strength when he was snapping at the children in school, giving them all detentions.”
“Dad doesn’t have a temper,” I argue. “He wouldn’t lose his cool.”
“Wanna bet?” Mum, or rather the thing inside her, laughs deep and slow.
The frost spreads over the door. I turn to the window to see more frost seeping over the walls. I pull the blanket tighter across my shoulders.
“You don’t know me or my family at all. You have no power here,” I say, trying to stop my teeth chattering as I talk.
The frost spreads over the walls and along the floor, working its way inwards. In the centre of the room I stand, watching the ice head towards me. It seems to pull the walls in, shrinking the room until it’s a tiny freezer. My heart beats like a drum and my breath steams out of me in panicked quickness.
The door handle rattles again. Mum beats her fists against the door, which stands firm as I hear her kicking it harder and harder, all the time that growl rumbling through the wood. The frost covers the entire floor now; it’s seeped up to my toes and I can do nothing except pace the room, trying to keep warm. I sense my skin and lips turning blue.
“How’s the temperature in there?” Mum says. “Toasty and warm?”
“Mares, you don’t look good,” Lacey whispers.
The desperation of my situation seizes me by the throat. My lungs burn from the icy air I breath in and out, in and out. My fingers stiffen with the cold. I climb onto my bed and wrap the duvet around me, rubbing my palms together, watching the door rattle and shake.
“We’re going to be okay,” I say, my voice shaking with the cold. “We’re going to be okay.”
The rattling door goes quiet. The silence hangs, a suspended ball of nothingness, nothing tangible, and yet so huge it fills the room. There’s scratching and growling coming from outside, and in my mind, Mum has turned completely feral, transformed into a wild animal coming for me. I glance at a family photograph on my bedside table and tears well up in my eyes.
“I can’t… I can’t do this,” I whisper. “It’s my mum.”
A roar rips through the air and the house shakes. The beast that inhabits my mother grows stronger.
“I’m going out there,” Lacey says. “I’m going to face it.”
“No!” I say. “You can’t. What if you get hurt?”
“I’m already dead. What harm can it do?”
I shake my head. “You were weakened by Amy, remember? I need you strong. We’ll face her, it, together when the time is right.”
Lacey lifts her arms in exasperation. Around her my belongings clatter to the floor. The bed shakes, up and down, jangling my bones. “When is the time right? You’re freezing to death and the house is collapsing around you.”
Oh, God, she’s right. I have to do something.
With my muscles shivering, the bed shaking, and my teeth chattering, I unwrap the duvet from my shoulders and collapse onto the floor below. My fingers are blue against the frosty wood. I’m pulling myself along the floor, weakened from the chill, when Lacey calls out my name. I turn just in time to see the wardrobe falling towards me, its doors swinging open.
It lands heavily on my shoulder and I cry out in pain. A piece of wood breaks from the frame, slicing into my arm. Warm blood oozes from the wound. I struggle against the heavy furniture, tangled in clothes and poked by my coat hangers. I touch my forehead where there’s a hard lump forming.
As I wriggle my way out from under the wardrobe, the frost-covered chair falls away from the door and there’s an almighty splintering of wood. The door bursts from its hinges, creating a halo of light from the corridor outside my room. There, stood in the frame is the monster wearing the mask of what my mother might look like if she was dying. A raspy scream escapes my throat.
Clumps of dead hair fall from her scalp. Trickles of blood move down her chin, caused by the cracks around her mouth from the eerie grin on her face. Her eyes are bulging, manic, red-veined golf balls. The jeans and slippers she wears are dirtied with smeared blood. Two of her fingers are missing nails. I know this because she holds her hands out to me.
“Come to Mummy,” she says.
But before I can react, she levitates from the floor. She leans back, folding over, almost in half. Her hair swings out below her, and she rotates slowly.
Chapter Eighteen
Watching her there, it reminds me of a time when I was little and I couldn’t sleep. Mum is a night owl. She stays up late and gets up early. She’s never been a great sleeper, and yet she always seems to have so much energy. That night, I crept downstairs and sat on the sofa with her. She was watching a scary movie, and when I appeared in the room she let out a yelp and then a relieved laugh.
“I don’t understand why I’m watching this,” she said. “I don’t even enjoy these films.”
I sat down next to her on the sofa and flinched when the scary ghost came on the screen.
“I’ll change the channel,” Mum said. “These films are awful. I was just channel hopping, really.”
But I saw something in her that I never saw again. It was a twitch at the side of her mouth, an unblinking focus on the film, a hesitation when she picked up the remote. Mum has always been drawn to darkness. Why didn’t I see it? She was more frightened than Dad when I told her about my visions. Angry, almost. She avoids all funerals, even the funeral for her niece a few months ago. Dad said she refused to go to the funerals of both her parents.
She tried to hide it.
I pull myself out from under the wardrobe, wincing at the pain of my injuries. Lacey stands between me and Mum, her arms wrapped around her body. Mum continues to levitate from the floor. Spinning and spinning. I tap the Athamé at my hip.
“What do you want from me?” I ask the spirit inside my mother. “Did you try to possess me first? Why?”
She lands on her feet and turns to us, turning to Lacey first.
“Temptation is stronger when you’re dead, isn’t it?” she says, speaking to Lacey. “We lack everything, the basic functions of what makes us human. It lets the resentment in. If you joined me, we could live together.”
Lacey sneers. “I’m sorry, mate, but destroying people from the inside out doesn’t sound like living to me.”
Mum shrugs. “Suit yourself.”
Lacey is ripped off her feet and slammed against the rear wall of the room. I cry out her name but it’s no use. Lacey’s head lolls forward as the wall pulls her in. With my stiff, aching body, I limp to her as fast as I can. But Lacey’s unconscious form is wrapped like a cocoon, the wal
l closing in around her. Only her face is visible.
I spin around to face my mother. “What have you done to her? Stop it!”
Mum’s mouth opens into a grin so dripping with malice that I can feel the blood drain from my face. “It’s just you and me now. If you want your friend back, you’d better do what I say.”
“Fine.” I step towards her, every part of my body aching to turn away. My gut tells me this is wrong, all of it. I’m fighting this the wrong way. But how? Liza warned me about the walls. I should have listened. But how could I have stopped Lacey being trapped? I can’t even touch her.
Mum’s bony, bloodied fingers grasp hold of my hair and yank me forwards. I’m thrust out into the hallway, where the light flickers on and off above me. Now that I’m close to her, I smell the rancid scent of whatever has possessed her. It’s as though I can smell the flesh rotting as she walks and talks. A living zombie. Her breathing is laboured and her chest heaves up and down.
“Mum? Are you in there?”
“Shut up.”
I’m dragged down the stairs by my hair. Wherever Mum walks, her tattered slippers leave a trail of frost. What if I can’t get this thing out of her? Will she freeze to death? The front door is so close and yet so far away. I could laugh at the thought of Emmaline telling me to bring Mum to her. I’ll never get her out of here. She’s too strong for me. The pull of this house is too strong.
A shadowy figure steps out from the living room. There’s a black aura around the form, but I still recognise the physical shape of a woman in old-fashioned clothing. She has hair pulled tightly back from her face, and dark eyes that bore out of her skeletal features.
“Dark one,” she whispers. Her voice is an echo, half-formed and vague. She is a weak spirit. “I sensed another presence…”
“I took care of it,” Mum says.
The shadow-spirit turns to me. “Is that the girl? She doesn’t look special.”
